Teacher's grammar

[EmmalinaC]

DD1's teacher has written 'You're decoding skills are excellent' in her planner. Would it be very unreasonable of me to highlight this error and add the note 'Your grammar is not'?

Gove says you can only have two goes at the numeracy and literacy tests? I might be with him on that. I overheard a girl telling her friend she was having to re-do her maths and English GCSEs to do teaching training. She only needed a C. I know a fair few teachers and a lot of their spelling and grammar is appalling.

I remember distinctly as a 7yo sitting writing They're, there, their over and over again, having to write a paragraph that included them with their correct usage, and the same with pear, pair. And your, you're. And drawing a pear/pair tree that we had to put the words into in little pear shapes.

I have never used them wrongly since.

My DC's have done pretty much the same thing at around the same age. If even my DC's with SN's can consistently use the correct form of your or you're, then I feel that a teacher has no reason not to.

(And yes, I have resorted to red pen occasionally, with certain teachers, who do have an ongoing issue with poor grasp of the English language.)

Yes, that first 'they're' doesn't need a capital letter. I blame Steve Jobs and his infinitesimally tiresome Autocorrects for a lot of these errors on MN.

It's / its is one that makes me irrationally angry, because you HAVE to click on the worlds tiniest cross if you wish to post its. Otherwise, if you type too quickly, you get Autocorrected to it's regardless of whether it IS doing that correctly or not. Either way, it's annoying, and I think I know when I mean ITS YOU STUPID PIECE OF GODFORSAKEN TECHNOLOGY.

I had a student teacher who taught my class about apostrophes for the first time and although we had gone over everything. She did it completely wrongly. That and basic spelling mistakes all over the board.
The lecture wouldn't let me fail her and it was really hard to unteach that mistake.
Annoying that she will now be doing this with a class and getting paid for it.

Sorry for the messed up punctuation. Bloody fat fingers and phone.

Of course it's a bloody grammatical error - just because that also led to a wrong set of letters in the wrong order doesn't make it a spelling mistake! The primary culprit was a lack of understanding of grammar.

I always find these threads mind-bending, especially when teachers come on to say, "s/he was probably busy, it's a trivial piece of writing" etc. I'm a journalist. You couldn't even start a career in journalism - couldn't even make it past unpaid work experience - if you made these sorts of mistakes. If one industry can manage it, so can another.

In all seriousness, if you are a teacher (or anyone else) and suspect your grammar is poor, I recommend English for Journalists by Wynford Hicks. It concentrates on all the common mistakes adults make.

I agree the comment I made in the OP might have sounded snarky but the use of a pink pen and 'ahem!' in parentheses was an attempt to make the correction light-hearted!

So what would be the best way to do it?!

longtalljosie - You read the DM online recently? Grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes - and that's before their comprehension skills.

I have, and it makes me furious... Mostly their headlines (they probably don't have any proper subs ). Maybe I'm already an old fogey and within a few years there'll be literal errors everywhere and no-one will care...

I may be wrong, but I very much doubt Josie would hold up the Daily Mail Online as a paragon of good journalism...

When DS1 was in Year 4 his teacher wrote that one of his targets was to improve use of apostrophe's. I couldn't help myself and crossed out the rogue '.

Raspberryandorangesorbet
"To everyone saying that errors are bound to happen with 300 odd books to mark etc, actually, I think grammar and spelling should be so ingrained and familiar to you that the correct way is your default."

I was going to say try and see (in a nice way).

but then

"This, not thus."

Well, personally I'm very impressed by those people who say they (or come to that their whole industry!) never, ever make a mistake!!

Tricky. And one that I know is going to be a problem for me too, as correcting printed material is my trade. I don't see very much connection between "what your DD's teacher has to deal with on a daily basis" and not being able to spell, but I'm not in a teacher's shoes - and if a teacher becomes conscious that you're likely to correct her comments, she may, as I think larks35 was trying to say, just write "well done" and leave it at that in order to avoid your pink pens. This honestly would not be helpful for your DD as she'll miss out on valuable feedback.

I think the way I'm going to deal with this is that I'm going to tell my DS if his teacher has made a spelling (grammar, punctuation etc.) mistake in his book, point out what it is and explain what would have been correct. But I'm also going to be very clear with him that people DO make spelling mistakes, that we DON'T need to tell her about it, and that it DOESN'T mean what she's said is wrong. That way, hopefully, I can simultaneously keep up standards in his English, not undermine his teacher, and get him to understand that spelling mistakes do not necessarily mean that someone's wrong, stupid, or ill-educated. It just means they've made a mistake.

I do understand the indecision around how to tackle it, OP! So hard to find a way that satisfies both the demands of education and tact!

YABU. Everyone knows that you mark in green.

Raspberry

Why wouldn't it be the same? apparently its "all about proofreading".

I do wonder though if its the same people that complain about grammar and spelling that also complain about generic reports?

Oh! How I agree with Raspberry. did we go to the same school (primary and grammar together?)

Did

Raspberry

Others on the thread have said that its about proofreading.
I joined your comment about report writing to those earlier in the thread and the generic comments of "well done".

yes indeed agree to disagree.

with the joining of comments, its because it is what happens with report writing.

Parents complain about mistakes and then complain when they are generic.