to want my child's teacher to understand how apostrophes work!!!

[intothenever]

DD is writing things like 'She live's in a house' and has been taught that the plural of potato is potato's! I am getting really pissed off!

Well then take a photocopy and do the marking on that. Simple.

CalamitouslyWrong Tue 17-Dec-13 10:10:56
"Why on earth would anyone imagine that spelling and grammar are the barometer of education. One can be highly educated, able to think critically, analyse complex ideas, possess an enormous amount of specialised knowledge, know how to find out information and evaluate it, communicate their ideas in various ways and still struggle to spell 'definitely' or be a bit confused about semi-colons. I know brilliant university professors who can't spell for shit; it doesn't make them poorly educated.

It is usually people who can't do several of the above e.g. that fool gove who get all het up about spelling and grammar and see it as the be all and end all."

Speaking as somebody who has to mark/proof-read/review/critique and teach some of these complex ideas, I do prefer it if the grammar is clear so that I can actually see the brilliance that underlies it. I do not appreciate it when I have to sit pen in hand and rewrite the text before I can understand it. Or when I am slowed down by poor spelling and punctutation and have to reread a word several times to see what it says.

Writing well and proof-reading carefully is a courtesy you show to the reader. These days academics are required to do their own proof-reading as we no longer have the supporting staff to help us. Asking the reader to become an unpaid secretary is simply not on imho.

Asking the reader to become an unpaid secretary is simply not on imho.

This. (a) If you can't write about it clearly, you probably can't think about it clearly and (b) if you can't be bothered to write about it accurately, I can't be bothered to read about it, and my time matters to me more than your time matters to me.

There will be exceptions. But I'm not sure there are enough exceptions to spend time reading shoddy writing on the offchance that it's a diamond in the rough.

I think you're missing their point, pixel

I do apologise for the typo. I can spell "punctuation".

so, back to OP

Did you tell the teacher intothe never?

and to the poster who was watching the spelling mistake on the blackboard during the nativity, I would have made an ironic comment to the head pointing it out.

Send things back corrected in red pen, I would

Pixel do you seriously want me to photocopy everything that I am marking. Where in earth am I going to find the time and money to photocopy everything? Never mind the environmental impact of students writing on paper and then photocopying that work onto more paper.

Regarding corrections - my school has a policy of us picking out up to three spelling errors in a piece of writing. These are underlined, then written below the piece for the pupil to copy three times.

I push my luck by correcting homophones within the work too. I figure it's not a 'spelling' error if they still struggle with there/their.

Other errors may be highlighted depending on the focus of the lesson. We were working on inverted commas last week, so all speech punctuation errors were circled ruthlessly.

An ex-employer of mine (headteacher of a large primary in a deprived area in the UK) announced in a staff meeting that 'Spelling doesn't matter these days'. He also has appalling grammar, both spoken and written. Add to that his statement, 'No one reads books any more; they watch the film' (used to justify his teaching a book from a film excerpt and not the book itself) and you have a recipe for appalling standards of literacy.
Oh and no one higher up than him cares, because none of the parents (many of whom are new to speaking English themselves) complain.

going slightly off topic but I was taught to use an apostrophe when writing about time.

e.g. In three years' time

the time of three years

is this old hat?

I was taught to use an apostrophe when writing about time.

Correct. Even Guardian headline writers know this.

yes thanks but working in education I notice that it isn't in texts when it should be. Almost the attitude that no one would be able to grasp it and dumbing down.

I have never realised that that apostrophe rule existed alemci, and it feels like a piece of jigsaw just slotted into place.

mn - you learn something new every day!

is this old hat?

No.

WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO WE LIVE IN WHERE, FIVE YEARS AFTER THEIR BIRTH, CHILDREN STILL MISUSE APOSTROPHES!!!!!!!!!

There is a particularly smug type of poster (and they exist in real life too) who wants to see children "told" if they make mistakes.

Er...guilty as charged. If that makes me smug, fair enough.

I have never realised that that apostrophe rule existed alemci

If you want to add to your apostrophe knowledge, you know all that stuff about there being two sorts of apostrophe, the ones use for omission (don't, isn't) and the one used for possession (Dave's dog's basket)?

There's really only one sort, omission.

Shakespeare et al only use it for omission and for vowels that aren't sounded. So what's now rendered (Tempest, I.1) "Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle. Blow, till thou burst thy wind,if room enough!" is "Take in the toppe-sale: Tend to th' Masters whistle: Blow till thou burst thy winde, if roome enough." in the first folio (and subsequent editions of the 17th century).

Printers had started to use the apostrophe to mark vowels that weren't pronounced any more (for example, it's quite common to see modern "loved" spelt "lov'd"). Old English had a genitive case ("godes lof" = "God's love"), which had disappeared over time (Comedy of Errors, I.2, "For Gods sake send some other messenger"). Sometimes this was printed as "God's" because of a vestigial awareness of the "missing" e. Eventually, in the 18th century it was standardised for possession, including for cases where there actually wasn't a missing e ("the gate's hinges"). The pronouns were already irregular in OE and hadn't changed other than the spelling being regularised ("Cnut cyning gret his arcebiscopas" = "Cnut King greets his archbishops") so they didn't acquire apostrophes (hence all the confusion over its).

The plural possessive case ("my three dogs' bowls") didn't get standardised until the 19th century. OE had the ending -as for this case, but I think the convention of putting an apostrophe after the s was pretty much invented from whole cloth. Someone who actually understands this stuff might comment.

that is fascinating friday, thank you!

There are quite a few people suggesting that 'young' or 'recently qualified' teachers make mistakes with spelling and grammar, but I have seen plenty of older and more experienced teachers make frequent mistakes too. As a primary school teacher you teach all the subjects, most people are stronger in either literacy or numeracy. Not every teacher is great at both. I would imagine if a teacher who is not that great at grammar was going to be teaching apostrophes they would revise the subject themselves first to make sure they don't actually teach it wrong. If they are just correcting some writing they may just slip up.

Friday, I love your posts.

I had to type out a passage from the Letters and Sounds booklet today, for my phonics group, and it is littered with basic grammatical errors as well as being bloody awful .

most people are stronger in either literacy or numeracy.

One is reminded of poor old Napoleon, who could only learn DEF at the expense of forgetting ABC.

Are your seriously saying that for people with a three or four year post-18 education, it is a zero-sum game as to whether they can use simple punctuation or do primary-school level maths? I'd say that the word for a primary school teacher who can't both (a) use apostrophes, commas and capital letters correctly and (b) add, subtract, multiply and divide with integers, simple reals and rationals, calculate percentages, do simply work with shapes and so was is "incompetent". If you're a primary school teacher and can't score 100% on the KS2 SATs, you should get another job.