To wonder how the HELL some people get into university?

[SayYuleNowSayWhipTheReindeer]

I'm currently doing a degree as a mature student alongside work, and am just amazed at the stupidity lack of knowledge some of my fellow students have. For instance, nearly all of them - on a fecking ENGLISH LANGUAGE degree course - mix up "your" and you're", "there" and "their", and use the spelling "definately".

I overheard a conversation today that involved several students talking about how they didn't know their times tables above 5 or 6.

AIBU to seriously wonder if it's even worth doing a degree if this is the standard they're allowing in at the moment?

Thanks grovel. And I jolly well hope you took one of those reflective journals you were talking about with you while walking the dogs. The nights draw in earlier and earlier these days.

limited, I hope you realise my cheers were ironic!! I was trying to pour oil on the water and you put the boot in.

I went to a local secondary school open evening for prospective students last year.

In the English dept was a board with examples of pieces of work. The central piece which had been blown up and appeared to be the star piece had "could of" in the first sentence. This was something that the head of the English dept had read, vetted and deemed the best piece of work. Some kids are fighting a losing battle.

Oh dear grovel. I don't understand irony. Neither do I understand why intelligent people make silly points to someone who clearly knows more than them.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a debate. I'm just saying that final post of lequeen's was foolish and insulting. LRD has lots of patience to go with her knowledge.

The only thing that spelling and a good vocabulary indicates is that someone is capable of learning new words and how to spell them.

Some of the most 'wordy' people I have ever met have used language to try and appear more intelligent than they were, but scratch the surface and it was empty underneath.

Good SPAG doesn't equate to the ability to understand, analyse and critique work, or deal in abstracts. It just means you have good SPAG. I would rather teach someone with poor SPAG with good analysis skills than the other way around.

Barf your last post made me hungry for spaghetti

Ahh ignore me SayYule...

....That was just SPAG Bull

'LRD I fully agree that 'describing what happens in a poem' is a very valid form of analysing it. However, describing what happens in a poem is just the begining, surely - the same if you are analysing a piece of piece of prose. You don't just explain what happens in the story, and then leave it there?'

I said it was not a valid form of analysing it!

I'm sorry, I can see you have clear ideas about what makes an essay first class. My ideas are very different. They are also shared by the people who marked my essays and taught me to teach, FWIW.

Yes, by their third year, most students I think have learned a great deal. That is kind of the idea of university.

Some will not have learned some of the SPAG skills, though (which are IMO rather different from vocabulary). Some people will always need to look words up in order to spell them correctly. Some people will always find that when they write things down, the punctuation goes haywire.

What I would hope a student like that would learn by year 3, are the skills to compensate: using a dictionary, proof reading, using a computer if that helps.

Btw, I wanted to say, limited thanks for saying I was being patient, because I wasn't sure I was being.

I think LeQ is being patient too. I do get that she honestly feels that these things are crucial and is concerned, which is something I can understand. It comes across very clearly on this thread that everyone feels worried that some students are coming to university without the skills they were supposed to learn at school, and they're sometimes disrupting the classes for others like SayYule who are working hard, and all of this is costing a lot of money and perhaps not getting the students very far at the end of the process.

I do feel that it is important to distinguish between content and style in writing. I am frustrated by your posts, LeQ, because the example of made-up writeng you give indicates that you are certain the two cannot be disentangled: you assume that a student with poor SPAG could not analyze a text properly either. And I am struggling because to me, the more important skill is learning how to disentangle content and style, learning how to comprehend and analyse language.

I do think it matters to give chances to people who struggle with SPAG skills. Yes, they are so very useful. But you can do a good degree without them, and you can be useful to society, and you can earn a living. You don't have to feel useless, or unintelligent, if you don't master these skills. It might not be your fault. It might be that people can help you learn to overcome the problems. We can certainly try.

That is what I want to say to students who are in this position.

FWIW I have seen my old tutor a few times since graduating ten years ago, and he says that the level of knowledge in his students is definitely declining.

But perhaps spelling and grammar is variably important depending on your degree. If someone proposed to do a philosophy or literature degree and couldn't write a clear, properly spelled and cogently-argued essay I would be concerned about their capacity to do the work. On the other hand if someone were doing a degree in engineering or pure maths I would be less concerned as it would be more important for them to understand the principles of differentiation or applied physics. Many of the engineers I know are brilliant at their discipline but can't spell for toffee. So what, if they are good at what they do?

I couldn't give a shit whether an engineer can spell or not, as long as she's a good engineer. But if someone were proposing to do graduate work in an academic, essay-based discipline such as English, history or philosophy and asserting that to do so they did not need an ability to write clearly in conformity with established standards of spelling and grammar, I would think they were a bit of a joker and be tempted to harrumph about the corrosive effects of 'anti-elitism'.

manatee - I think what you have to consider is, is your graduate in the essay-based discipline able to compensate for his or her inability? If he or she is saying 'no, I can't write properly and I can't be bothered to sort it out either', obviously there is a problem. But if he or she is saying 'I struggle a lot with SPAG and will need to put a lot of time and effort into compensating - and perhaps I need the supervisor to be aware of this issue', IMO that is likely to work perfectly well.

My first drafts are never terribly well spelt or punctuated. My supervisor always has to tell me there are formatting errors, no matter how many times I've redrafted. But she doesn't make a fuss about it TBH. She just tells me to get my DH to proof read more often. I do actually put a lot of time into checking spelling and so on before the draft goes out, too. It's a courtesy, and since I can do the checks, I must. But in theory, it would be possible (though a right pain) to do a PhD through an amenuensis and have it transcribed. I know someone (not dyslexic) who spoke her entire PhD onto a dictophone and paid to have it transcribed, then read back to her, and she corrected it orally. That worked fine as far as I know.

Coming late to this thread but just a couple of things to add. I am an investment banker (I know.. ) and we get lots of maths grads through, many with an MBA or masters too. It's embarrassing to see sone of their communications with clients with poor grammar or spelling mistakes. These are some of the top graduates. They are representing the firm they work for and themselves and being able to communicate effectively surely must be an essential life skill.

Secondly, a friend of my niece who has just gone to uni asked me in all seriousness where Wales was.. She is English.

Now very paranoid about the spelling and grammar in my post but in my defence on my phone with its hideous auto correct and trying to make dinner at the same time!

Anytime LRD. You clearly have a great depth of knowledge about your subject and the aims of education and sound like a great lecturer.

Lequeen is no less passionate about her interest in English Literature but I am puzzled that someone who would like to exclude people from higher education for poor spelling, grammar and punctuation has quite a shaky grasp of those subjects herself from time to time.

Lequeen: you have a good degree in English Literature despite your occasional weaknesses and habit of confusing words - discrete for discreet and disingenuous when you mean naive, for example.

So isn't that what LRD is arguing? That promising students should be allowed leeway and given correction? I guess your lecturers hoped you wouldn't continue to make those mistakes after they'd taught you, but you do, and you've done well. So what's to criticise?

Don't go accusing me to being a stalker, now. As you know we've talked about this before and I told you of the time I threw stones and had my glass house smashed.

The difference between us is that I learned never to do it again.

That is very kind limited. I'm not a lecturer though - just a student who teaches. One day, maybe.

We all have our dreams. Mine aren't quite as elevated

Good luck. You sound great.

Thanks. And good luck with yours too!

(Elevated, I'm not so sure ... )

I don't know any of my times tables.
(I have a GCSE in Math and an A-level in Physics. I also have a degree and a professional qualification.)
I can't spell either.

Knowing timestables is really not hard. It's not a matter of memory skills or amazing mathematical powers. It is a matter of being about to add on and double. That pretty much covers any timestable fact. If there is no evidence of dyscalcula then I would find someone unable to work out a timestable fact to be lacking in initiative, problem-solving skills and determination. Yes, we all have those moments where it is easier to reach for a calculator for a bit of simple maths, but don't people feel any sense of pride in being able to THINK? Sorry I know that is off-topic but seriously - I can't believe people are defending the inability to calculate a simple single-digit multiplication.

Yep - I agree, LRD. The bottom line for me is: academic fields have a set of standard that relate to their respective disciplines. If for some reason you have difficulty with part of the standards in your field (eg you're good at crit comm but crap at spelling) but are willing to work round that (for example with a helpful DH) and are otherwise ace, then great. It's only if someone says we should ditch the idea of standards as such that I get jumpy.

(add on, double and halve - that'd what I should have said)

Interesting thread... I am a university lecturer who teaches lit and I agree with virtually everything LRD has said. Having spark and interesting ideas is more important at the beginning than having perfect SPAG. And while I am delighted if first-year students come in knowing what alliteration and assonance are, I certainly don't hold it against them if they don't know.

If their spelling and punctuation continue to be abysmal, though, that would be unacceptable, because it usually indicates hasty, carelessly done work. Dyslexia is another matter. LRD has made me want to be more aware of dyslexia as an issue. I wonder how many students have dyslexia without their teachers being aware of it?

Give me a clever, dyslexic student who is a terrible speller over a mediocre non-dyslexic student with perfect spelling any day.

In the context of Oxbridge, an applicant who spells badly may just have been badly taught. If applicants were admitted solely on the basis of how perfect their written work samples are, then the bias against state-educated applicants would be even worse than it already is. Oxbridge is actively trying to recruit more students from non-elite schools. That involves trying to select students with real potential, who may have been let down at various points by their teachers. You have no idea how my heart plummets when I read a piece of written work submitted by an applicant and see the teacher's corrections on it, and some of the teacher's corrections are WRONG.

LRD is right. Dodgy SPAG can be fixed, and isn't necessarily an indicator of a student's true ability.

Perfect SPAG is lovely, though, and always appreciated!

Yes, you said that better than I could, manatee, and I agree. Keeping standards high is important.

marfisa - you're making me nervous now that you may be someone who taught me!

I wonder too how many students are dyslexic and it's not known. I know a lot are diagnosed at university, partly because of the way the dyslexia guidelines for HE and pre-18 schooling are different I think.

I've also noticed that some people won't admit to dyslexia because they've never really struggled before, so at university they don't realize it is holding them back or they get to feel it's 'unfair' for them to ask for extra help. And I also got one person recently who told me enough about his educational psychologist's report to make me strongly suspect that, though his diagnosis was 'dyscalculia', another ed psych might have diagnosed dyslexia. And unfortunately the student assumed that a diagnosis of dyscalculia meant he had no problems with anything that could affect his studies, even though the report did explain that he had short-term memory problems as well. His essay structure was poor because he kept losing the thread, basically.

But yes, I would really love to know more about it all.