AIBU in being shocked that pupils aren't marked down in exams

[Hammy02]

for having poor spelling and grammar? Apparently the coalition are reintroducing marking down exam papers by 10% if spelling & grammar is not up to scratch. How on earth did the previous government get away with this? No wonder employers are having trouble when people can't write a decent application for a job?

"Coherent" encompasses good grammar and punctuation at least, and "spelling is correct" is fairly unequivocal, surely?

Aaah. Crossed posts.

Well, clearly not in this case. I was just C&P for cumfy who didn't know what level 7 meant.

The exam board that I teach specify that you can't get the higher marks without your spelling and grammar being good. They don't dock marks for bad spelling and grammar, but they won't award the highest marks.

ZZZ - I become increasingly unconvinced that schools can ever equalize things for children.

Schools have large classes. A lot goes on. The curriculum is very broad.
There is only so much teachers can do.

If parents won't encourage reading, then what are teachers to do?

I am a pedant. I love good spelling and correct grammar. I used to proof read for a living THEN i had a child with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia and other learning difficulties) which means he cannot spell or write and struggles with learning grammatical rules....
He is very bright and it breaks my heart to think of him being judged - by some of you on face value or by an exam board - when the actual content of his work is very high.
And no, allowances are not automatically made for students like him. He does not have a statement and is classed as ''high-achieving'' so I have had to fight and fight for him to be allowed things like extra time in exams. But his spelling is so bizarre, I cannot see any examiner seeing past that :(

Prof

Pupils show understanding of the ways in which meaning and information are conveyed in a range of texts. They articulate personal and critical responses to poems, plays and novels, showing awareness of their thematic, structural and linguistic features. They understand why some texts are particularly valued and influential. They select, synthesise and compare information from a variety of sources.

ROFL particularly:
synthesise and compare information from a variety of sources

Half people with PhDs don't do this effectively. [imo of course] :o

Also, on a particularly pedantic note...

They articulate personal and critical responses to poems, plays and novels, showing awareness of their thematic, structural and linguistic features.

This doesn't seem right to me.
Wouldn't this be more correct:

They articulate personal and critical responses to poems, plays and novels, showing awareness of the thematic, structural and linguistic features.

or the underlying.

To attempt to use their in this context

1. invites confusion between subject and object.

1. Creates a very frowned upon implicit anthropomorphisation of the poems etc, to which their is referring.

Molly I can only say that when I was teaching Y6s and getting them through their SATs (one of the reasons I left teaching) I taught a number of children like your son. One child I remember in particular was thoroughly dyslexic and he could never have achieved more than a level 2 for his Literacy. However he was given an amanuensis in his Maths and Science exams and achieved a Level 4 and 5 respectively. I used to find a lot of kids with dyslexia found ways of understanding science very well. Exam boards will be sympathetic to children with a specific learning difficulty like your son and give credit where credit's due.

Not sure I've demonstrated enough awareness of thematic features or synthesised information from a variety of sources there to "pull a level 7".

Must try harder.

Aries, that is fab to hear.
I was a bit paranoid, in case it was my son you taught. But then I remembered, he got level 6s in maths and science - with a scribe (which we and his wonderful teacher fought and fought and fought for!)

"Type written applications seem to have more mistakes ironically than hand written ones like those I did on leaving university. Not sure why - people relying on technology but not using it properly maybe? "

Probably right there. If you ask me to write a letter, or an essay, on paper I will founder badly. I find it hard to put it in order, to put my point across, for it to make sense to other people.

I can usually to it to some degree of success, but it involves lots and lots of re-writing. Doing that on paper at school used to frustrate me, and eventually I'd just give up and hand in whatever I had to hand.

The ability to "select all, delete" on a computer means that I still struggle with making myself clear, but it takes much less time and is much less frustrating (and demotivating) for me.

I also seem to retain information better if I type it rather than write it. So when I did my OU course last year I type all my course notes and task questions.

I'm just very glad I was born at the time I was. I think my future would have been much bleaker had I been born earlier when their was no technical back-up for the likes of me (I'm having an almost irresistible urge to use myself instead of me)

technology is fabulous for my dyslexic/dysgraphic son! We would be well and truly buggered without him being able to type.

molly

Just had a look on wikipedia at an example of dysgraphia.

I would class my handwriting as being similar [if not slightly poorer] to this example.
Had always just assumed I was a bit crap at handwritng.

Is this example dysgraphia as you understand it ?

Perhaps we should think about the way that we examine students. The culmination of years of work is often a written exam. I understand that any other format might be more labour-intensive and expensive, but it would allow non-readers/poor spellers to demonstrate their mastery of a subject that outside of the exam does not depend on the narrow range of skills tested.

It is unfair that people who have a natural aptitude for some skills are given an advantage over those who don't have a natural aptitude. Take my dad, who has an encyclopedic general knowledge, a broad range of practical skills and an innate understanding of the rules of language and mathematics. His illegible handwriting disguises the fact that his spelling is atrocious.

That does not mean, however, that we should neglect the skills in literacy and numeracy that underpin our daily lives. We should, however, maintain a sense of perspective about their relative importance.

Eh? I did A levels less than five years ago, and 10% of available marks were given for spelling and grammar. I don't think there's any reintroduction to do, surely?

Cumfy - that's interesting. That second piece of handwriting is much easier to read than the first.

'I think it is stupid to test spelling and grammar in every exam, when students don't have access to the tools they'd normally use to check these things with them in the exam!' Well, they have their brains with them and should hopefully over the 11 years they are in school have absorbed how to spell some key words.

'When I was teaching, spelling lists were issued weekly, tests administered on a Friday but it was the same children week after week who hadn't learned them. And these were not necessarily the children with learning issues. We had library time, reading time, book fairs, authors and poets in to inspire and enthuse the children. I don't remember anything of that sort when I was a kid in Thatcher's Britain. That makes me conclude that it is not the education system which is at fault here.'

When I was at secondary in Thatcher's Britain we had library time, reading time in English, lots of grammar lessons (subordinate clauses with Mr White), book fairs et al. Obviously different LEAs approached things in different ways.

it used to be 5% of the mark when i sat A levels back in the mid nineties.

i think in actual fact most examiners will mark you down by more than that whether or not there is a provision for it in the marks scheme - academic types I'v met tend to 6really^ hate bad grammar. Especially for essay-based exams. That's why it makes sense to limit the amount so people with poor spelling but reasonable knowledge are not over-penalised.

I went to school in 4 different LEA's under Thatcher - it was the same in all of them for me.

How many people during their working day don't have access to a dictionary or spell checker?

And I do hope that all of the bright sparks on this thread that think that a student should be able to remember everything in an exam, facts, figures, spelling, grammar without any other tools have no computers, calculators, dictionaries, or other reference books at home......after all you shouldn't need them as you've been to school and university so shouldn't need them

as an aside..grammar was already wildly unopular by the late seventies, as was the 'classical' curriculum. my Dad had chosen this time to train to teach Latin.

i learned the words 'noun' etc at home, school asked me learn to spell by using word-lists - they had some kind of colour-coded card system.

sems like bollocks in retrospect..

anyway, teaching grammar by rote does not have to be boring at all - teachers of English as a foreign language get to use all kinds of fun games to teach English grammar and spelling (and phonics obv).

This is a bit late activiate but the definition of being illiterate is being unable to read or write.

Sorry activate just reread the rest of your post - yes I do the know that illiterate also means ignorance of a discipline - but that was not clear from your post - which I think does make it inflammatory.

I went to school in the '80s and my teachers worked very hard at trying to teach us spelling and grammar. A lot of people my age are shocked at how much time my school spent on it.

My daughter was told that it didn't matter if she wrote of or off because they meant exactly the same.

ProfessorLayton I know you're only the messenger, but WTF does "Pupils are confident in matching their talk to the demands of different contexts" mean? Their talk? Is this a talk (ie lecture, presentation) they are doing? If not, why not say speech? Talk just sounds wrong. I suppose 'oral communication' would never get past the Plain English folk.

There are many different approaches to teaching and different pupils will respond to different ways. My aunt, a retired Primary school teacher, despairs when she sees the latest rush to 'phonics for all' or whatever because, although phonics are useful to some, a combination of techniques is what's needed to reach all students.

I don't see what's wrong with mixing some rote learning in with the development of creative and analytical skills - both are needed and why should we neglect children who respond better to more traditional methods?

S&G should be marked in all exams, simply because not being able to write properly makes you look thick when it comes to job applications. I teach at a university and by the time I get a roomful of 18-24 year olds who can't spell, construct sentences, who don't know where to put a full stop or how to use capital letters, it's too late.

And for those saying 'why should you have to spell correctly in exams when you'll always have spell checker in real life, I've got two points:

(a) spell checkers don't pick up homophones (words that sound the same, but are different - common ones I see are 'baron' for barren or 'manor' for manner);
(b) this reminds me of a student who asked why couldn't they have access to the internet during exams, as he couldn't see a situation IRL where he wouldn't be able to Google anything he wanted to know. To which I replied 'how impressed would you be if, every time you asked me a question in class, I had to Google it because I didn't know?'

We're in danger of prizing the ability of students to analyze information that is put in front of them over the ability to retain and synthesise information, to make connections and to be experts, whereas both skillsets are important. That act of retaining information can start with memorizing words.