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?

I can't see why we have been making allowances for bad spelling and grammar. Do we think its too hard for teenagers to impart knowledge without resorting to text speak and a lack of punctuation? It hasn't been beyond the grasp of teenagers previously (I was at school in the 80s).

I honestly get really annoyed when my 13 year old nephews write "lol at u nite nite" on Facebook and email.

What shocks me the most is people in their twenties who honestly cannot write grammatically or spell correctly. Why should they get away with it at school? Our beautiful language is being decimated through laziness.

Obviously I feel exceptions should be made for dyslexics and others struggling with similar conditions, but that does not mean we should wipe grammar out for those who can.

Here endeth the lesson. Sorry, got carried away.

Exams are partly about being able to express knowledge clearly in writing. If you're unable to do that, you might get mollycoddled in a relativistic school environment but the real world will penalise you for it. It's worth knowing, by the time you leave school, that you should make an effor with spelling and grammar as you'll be judged for it; schools that don't teach this basic fact are not doing their pupils any favours.

In deprived areas the adult literacy rate is around 75%.

I've been in several family homes where there are absolutely no books- not even an atlas or encyclopedia. There often aren't even any newspapers or magazines either.

How can these parents read to/with their children if they cannot read themselves?

that example of dysgraphia just looked lie spidery handwriting to me (which is I suppose what it means)

Dbro is diagnosed dysgraphic and his writing isn't joined up, and looks like an 8 year olds. thanks to the rise of computing, he still managed to pass a law course...with emmanuensis

proud big sister<

if he'd lost any marks for spelling, it wouldn't have been his fault!

Maybe we should go back to Olde English??

That'll really separate the brains from the rest of us wouldn't it

No spell checkers don't pick up homophones - but if you know the subject properly (and just can't spell) then surely to goodness you're going to realise when you read back through what you've written that you've used the wrong term?

Surely homophones are more about an understanding of what you're writing about rather than spelling???

The course flower maid the bred harder to need

cumfy - hmm, if ds wrote half as well as that example, I'd be thrilled - or at least be able to sleep better at nights....

''lol at u nite nite" on Facebook and email.'' - I think an awful lot of this sort of txtspk among young people is designed to alienate us oldies. It is a style of language they have adopted as their own, a yoof-code, if you will! I see it too, among ds's friends. The difference being, they can spell/use correct language when necessary...

Poncey aside: When I was a young teen, my friends and I used to write to each other in excruciating mock-Elizabethan lingo

Does dysgraphia not indicate that the process of writing is unusually difficult for a person who has it? I'm curious, I don't know much about it but I know that with the other 'dys' terms, people often produce work that looks not much worse than anyone else's, but it's much harder for them to get to that standard.

That's a side issue I suppose.

I did want to say, 'literacy' can be defined in all sorts of ways, and many aspects of it are really just technologies. Useful ones yes, but not endowed with magic mind-enhancing qualities, I think.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread, but I'm pleased. My DD is in yr7 and simply doesn't bother spelling correctly. She'll even copy things down wrong. DH said he was the same until - back in the old days! - he realised it was important and he'd lose marks if he didn't buck his ideas up.

DD was a bit shocked last week to lose two marks in a biology test for mis-spelling 'vacuole' and 'chloroplast' - in the latter case missing the second l, pure sloppiness. Well, in those cases maybe it was clear enough what she meant but with technical language it can be critical to get it spot-on right. If you write 'Hypa', well is that hypo or hyper? Mistake an alkane for an alkene and something could go bang in a big way!

Just been reading more of the proposed plans and I see there's several things they're looking at doing including

Reading tests for 6yr olds!!

And reducing modular exams. So we go back to the old system of knowledge recall and who can do the best cramming of raw facts and remember them in the exam on the day in question.

I haave been thinking aout this while I have been out. In the past a lot of the "thinkers" and "doers" in organisations never actually had to be able to spell and write well. They employed other people to do it for them ie secretaries and typing pools. My old managers used to dictate to their secretaries whose job it was to get the letter in the correct format,punctuation and spelling accurately done.

My mother said that a lot of her old managers were very poor spellers, but it didn't matter because they had secretaries to dictate to.
Nowadays we have to do all these things for ourselves in the work place.

I also saw a documentary on dyslexia in New Zealand. One marine engineer said he actively sort out the poorly spelled cv, because those people tended to be more inventive and able to think outside the box.

sorry Cadders I read "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." and have to disagree.

I think it was patently clear from the context of my post and the thread discussion itself that the definition of illiterate was ignorance of basic grammar and spelling. I find it interesting that you would continue to describe this as inflammatory simply because you did not understand the inference. Is this not the crux of our current conversation?

I think people can be as illiterate as they like, but don't be surprised when the CV which lands in my inbox is deleted when I attempt to read it. :)

Maybe I'm a little old-fashioned - or perhaps even a Tory bastard but I won't employ someone at this level who can't display a basic level of literacy. It's not unheard of to receive job applications which read along the lines of "hi x, heres my cv call me".

It costs nothing to run a spelling & grammar check over your document.

Alpine - that's not an issue with spelling and grammar - that's sheer bloody laziness

Alpine-really? People send in CV's with text speak? A CV should be 100% perfect if you expect to get anywhere at all. Jeez. Even if you aren't the greatest speller in the world, get someone else to proof-read it for you. How stupid are some people?

I'm at a Russel group university and mark a lot of first year essays. I'm always astounded by the shockingly bad grammar in some of the students' essays. The number of greengrocer's apostrophes I come across is unbelievable and quite a number of them seem to think it's ok to use contractions like "wouldn't" in a scientific essay. Sometimes the grammar is bad enough that it's difficult to actually read the content of the essay.

QueenStromba. I feel your pain. I work in a highly rated university and I have great difficulty frequently interpreting the emails students send me. I waste hours trying to get simple pieces of information out of them because they either are inclapable of interpreting simple instructions (i.e. what is your student ID?) or their writing is so incomprehensible that I have no idea what they are asking. Often the best that can be said of their communication skills is that 'all the words are English'.

I'm sorry, I'm a bad person.

'Russel', Stromba?

'inclapable', slug.

Actually, I love the idea of something being inclapable, it sounds like a reception class teaching tool for tricky words. And yet, it is not.

Unless a lot has changed since the 90s I don't think we teach a lot of grammar in the UK. Learning the difference between a noun, verb, adjective and pronoun isn't "teaching" grammar.

I only learned things like past participles etc when I learned Latin at senior school. Even then I have learned far more about grammar since teaching English to Chinese students over the past couple of years. I'm still often made to when a student asks me a grammar question about my own language that I can't answer... plus I received A*s at GCSE English Lit + Lit/lang and A at English Lit/Lang A-level.

I can't think of a single subject where spelling shouldn't be taken into account for final marks.

I should say, to be fair, I got an email from a student who'd obviously got my email address mixed up with the address of someone who matters. I did have to read her email several times as it didn't make much sense, but she was clearly as stressed as anything and trying to use the sort of complicated academic language she thought would be impressive. I felt really sorry for her, but I also wish I could have told her to write in simple English, she'd have sounded so much better.

I was at primary school in the 80s and was taught SPAG from a young age. Luckily I seem to be a 'natural speller' (so I was told!) and so never had a problem. However, it seemed that my primary was 'weird' in my area and very few other people of my age had been taught these things in anything other than a very rudimentary way (under Thatcher's gov).

When I became a teacher I realised (secondary -2000)that students were coming to school aged 11 - 16 who had never had incorrect SPAG pointed out (as it might discourage them ) and who became quite upset when I corrected their mistakes. It was very difficult to read work, and I also had to explain that they would lose mark in exams because of this. One poor boy got to 16 before he was diagnosed with quite severe dyslexia - resulting from me taking him to the Learning Support Teacher/SENCO after having noted his difficulties. He had simply been told he 'couldn't spell' but no- one had corrected him so he could learn, or investigated any further.

SPAG is important. As others have said however, marks are awarded at GCSE and A Level for correct SPAG, but these are within the level, not a discrete 5 or 10 %

Hammy - yes, they do actually do it. :( I think a person's CV is possibly one of the most important personal documents we can ever write - and, as you say - you get someone to give it the once over! If you have dyslexia or another difficulty then you make DOUBLY sure you get a friend to help!

Baroqin - and as such, they won't be employed by me!

yabu.it means people-like two of my dc who are both dyslexic stand a chance to show that they are incredibly intelligent but cant spell etc.

"Baroqin - and as such, they won't be employed by me!"

Don't blame you - I wouldn't employ them either

You know I was never taught spellng and grammar at school - but one thing I was taught was written in the language which was appropriate for the person you are writing for.

So - if you're emailing a friend to see if you can meet up on Friday night to get pissed go for a drink, it's ok to say

"Hey, you busy on Friday? fancy meeting up. Let me know ASAP

Baroqin xxx"

if you're writing to someone to invite them out for a business meal you'd use a much more formal tone, with no slang.

"Dear Mr Blogs

I am writing to you to blah blah blah (obviously not really blah blah ))

I look forward to hearing from you

Yours Sincerely

Baroqin

The One person in the organisation who can't spell"

Actually - surely the above is just common sense? But I know we were taught that sort of thing at school

I am writing to invite you to a meal blah

rubyrubyruby I agree with you, sometimes very bright chidren just can't spell.