To wish teachers had to take a spelling proficiency test before qualifying?

[ChwatFeechers]

DD, 11, is in her final year of primary school.

Yesterday she brought her books home from year 5. I was gobsmacked at the number of spelling mistakes which had been missed, whilst others had been marked in green pen. It wasn't an oversight either, as the same mistake was made often without being corrected, for example Febury for February.
There were also some grammar corrections to things DD had written correctly.
This isn't the first time I've noticed mistakes either.
AIBU to wish teachers had to prove they can spell adequately?
[runs]

Oh lovely another teacher bashing thread. Yet about 2 weeks into the holidays the "why are holidays so long, I want my kids back at school" threads will start.

It is not a regional variation. Anyone who gives a damn about the language and who cares about diction will not say somethink, no matter where they live.

It is a regional variation and I invite you to tell a professor of historical and sociolinguistics otherwise. The one I know would conclude you were an annoying idiot. You can be ignorant and a snob (and that is what you are doing here, by definition) all you like but try not to claim others who are more knowledgeable are incorrect, just to make yourself feel better in your (hopefully) RP bubble.

I couldn't give a rat's behind what you and your professor historical and socioliguistics think (and you call me a snob).

I've travelled and worked all over the UK, from Inverness to Truro via nearly every major city at some time or another. No one says somethink unless they are a lazy semi literate slob.

So stick that in your sociolinguistic pipe and smoke it.

TIL that some random snob on the internet's opinion on linguistic variation is equal to that of a specialist. I also learned that regional variation is dependent on which cities TTWK has visited with work.

It's not so much the lack of spelling mistakes being highlighted in her school books. She had the word 'passed' corrected to 'past', when she had written '10 minutes passed', meaning the passage of time rather than telling the time.
'How the poem effected me' was another from her literacy work.
Reports from school have had spelling mistakes/grammatical errors in them in the past.
I know not everyone can spell perfectly, which is why I stated it was a wish of mine for teachers to have to take a spelling proficiency test.
I didn't say that I hope new stringent tests come in for new teachers.

TheHumourlessHarpy

I teech 9 classes of 20-30 children 3 to 4 tymes a week - 4 of witch are low abelity children with any number of issus regarding axsess to lerning and genral litracy.

Do you want to no how much tim it wood take me to go throw roughly 200 books evry week and pik up evry speling mistak? If you care so much, you do it - go thru this and times it by a weeks worth of work per child per lesson per class. And I've punctuted.

Their wold be children's work were I mite as wel just put a bloody red line throw the hole thing - becose they are 15, and have a reeding age of 8, and even copying from the bored results in mistaks.

Or I mark selectively, and target key spellings through particular strategies. And I consider the children and teachers with factors such as dyslexia and I get my head out my sanctimoanyas backside

I do care, very much. Which is why I go through my daughter's work with her and point out her spelling mistakes. I never really entertained the idea of marking the work of a class of 30, though, so I chose a different career.

You're a teacher, you say? I suggest you look up the definition of the word sanctimonious.

Well share the knowledge then Smillas. What region is it where "somethink" is the norm. I'd love to know.

Assuming that Wormwood Scrubs or Parkhurst don't count as regions.

Saying "somethink" isn't going to help a child learning through phonics. My DD is yet to master the f/th distinction and I can see that effecting her spelling. I do understand that English isn't regular or straightforwardly phonetic, but it does no favours to a child to accept some pronunciations.

Whirlpool galaxy - uk spelling use and ize are both correct. So, recognise, recognize, organize, etc., are all correct! They are alternatives.

I've always been puzzled by the fact that the TV presenter Alastair Appleton, who is very well-spoken, says "somethink" and "anythink".

Wherever you've heard it used, TTWK. Surely you can't have been up and down and across the country and claim to never have heard it. Especially if you have such an... intense... opinion on it.

I personally grew up in an area with a variation that nasalises the g.

Saying "somethink" isn't going to help a child learning through phonics. My DD is yet to master the f/th distinction and I can see that effecting her spelling. I do understand that English isn't regular or straightforwardly phonetic, but it does no favours to a child to accept some pronunciations.

Really not sure how you can accept that English isn't 'regular or straightforwardly phonetic' and yet still make this argument re. 'somethink'.

You've used effect instead of affect here - should everyone change their pronunciation of that to make it easier? Should we all start pronouncing everything as written? Or should that be wuh-ri-ten?

Project green, you're a proofreader and yet you can confidently say that it's definitely recognise?

You need some training. Both ise and ize spellings are perfectly acceptable in uk English - check your dictionary or copy of Hart's New Rules.

My argument is that every little helps. We teach children to read using phonic plus a heap of exceptions. If you can reduce the number of exceptions then it gets a little easier. Presumably there is an accent/dialect which most closely works with phonics and teaching schemes make most sense for some accents/dialects, I have no idea what that accent/dialect is. I don't really care what other people do with their children in this respect, but my DDs will be encouraged towards "anything" at home.

Wherever you've heard it used, TTWK.

I heard it used all over the country, by people who don't talk properly. That isn't region variation, it's idiocy.

You said it was a regional variation. That means there's a region where "somethink" is part of the local vocab or accent. Please name that area.

But if what you're saying is that there are thick people who can't talk properly everywhere, then I agree with you.

I think that there are areas where "somethink" is a common pronunciation - for example Essex and parts of London, actually more like "somefink". That doesn't mean that it is universally used in the area. I was chatting with a SALT who said that they don't touch accent/dialect specific sounds. So if your local accent uses F instead of TH in some words, they just leave it. I find that interesting as some children experience different accents at school and home, and children need to be able to switch between them.

I am no longer banging my head against the brick wall that is TTWK.

I am glad to hear that they won't 'touch' dialect-specific sounds, Pico2. The aim to eradicate regional variation went out of fashion a while ago. Just look at the regional variation in news presenters these days, for example.

And people switch between different variations of language all the time, according to the context and the company they're keeping, and largely without thinking too much about it. It's called code-switching and can be quite fascinating.

Chwat I though it TheHumourless had a good point. It's certainly the reason I don't mark down every spelling

1. it takes too long

2. it is discouraging for the kids

3. you can teach the correct spelling without constantly correcting the same spellings. So February corrected once at the beginning of the work does the same trick as correcting it every single time.

To be perfectly honest, if you just go through work putting red pen on it you're wasting your time anyway as most of the kids won't even look at the corrections. It makes far more sense just to underline a few, then get the kids to look up the correct spellings themselves to copy.

No way am I staying up until midnight marking work they won't even look at.

Spelling is important but so is a child's sense of value and self-worth. Children who struggle with spelling are literally crushed when you hand back a page of writing which has more red ink on it than the original blue. Now I will correct 5 or 6 spellings per page of writing and encourage the children to check the same number of words they are unsure about before submitting.

Any child who struggles with spelling does not want to be reminded of their failings with every piece of writing they submit; occasionally it's good for them to see some success whether this be for their vocabulary, text organisation, paragraphing or whatever. Spelling obviously needs to be addressed but it's only one aspect of written English.

Whirlpool surely the important lesson for both you and your daughter is that many things are not "black and white" and that many rules are flexible, changeable, and ultimately unimportant.

If this were my child, I would show her a few versions of the spelling in different dictionaries (if she was interested) and tell her the teacher was being a bit annoying, that -ise is more common in the UK, but it is not worth worrying about.

I think it is very good for kids to see that teachers and parents can be wrong and can acknowledge their mistakes. It is also important for kids to learn that often there is no one "right answer", and that it is not cool to get on a soapbox about trivialities (unless you have the social skill to do this gracefully).

True Xenadog.

If all spellings are marked on every piece of work, then every single piece of work becomes all about the spellings.

If my learning objective is creative writing, then I'm going to have far more success achieving that objective if I concentrate on marking the parts of the work which pertain to that objective. So, is exciting vocabulary used? Adjectives? Paragraphs? A suitable beginning, middle and end? Does the story make sense and flow?

Far, far more important than marking each and every spelling.

Same for science, topic and other literacy objectives. The objective is important, not the spelling.

Government has actually said it has to be "recognise"..Year 5/6 statutory spelling, page 72 of National Curriculum. Gove decided that one.

Why is any form of concern raised by parents pounced on as "teacher bashing".

I want to respect teachers I really do but they have to earn it I think. My children are almost grown up now but primary horrors that have stayed with me:

"Johnnie read allowed beautifully today"
"guage"
from the head "there was a hundred extra dinners served at Christmas"
from the head "skawl" always pronounced skawl - it used to make me shudder
"Parent's evening"
Capitalised seasons: Autumn, Spring, Summer, Winter
Compartmentalising long multiplication - it was absurd and has been banned now I think - trying to remember what it was called but I'd have thought any teacher worth their salt should have binned or challenged it immediately.
the x and y axes being confused
MIL who taught age 10/11 for 35 years cannot convert a fraction to a decimal or vice versa and cannot work out a percentage

I find it hard to believe that prospective primary teachers take a literacy and numeracy test before they are allowed to teach or if they do it must be either very easy or have a very low pass mark.

Secondary teaching I have found to be of a far higher standard but at primary level I think there are significant issues. I am sorry that I think that but I was deeply shocked when my children attended primary school - you know an outstanding one too.

Re the pronounciation of a hard consonant at the end of "ing", my DH is from the West Midlands, and would always pronounce the "g" sound. He, like most people in the SE (including me, from Australia) has "softened" his accent, but this part of his accent remains.

I was recently speaking to a woman I know, whose family had just returned from America. Her DD is dyslexic. In school, near NYC, she was in all the honours classes, as they don't mark spelling. In the UK, she won't get into a selective school (they are in a grammar area) because her spelling is poor.

Why the obsession with spelling? Surely the point of writing is communication. TheHumourlessHarpy's post, above, can be clearly understood.

Furthermore, teachers are given far less autonomy over what they teach, these days. Surely the best solution is for the teacher to note down recurrent spelling errors, and find a fun way of reinforcing them. (Hangman, perhaps?) but if every minute of the day must be timetabled, that might not be able to be fitted in.