To be genuinely baffled by what seems like a growing absence of basic spelling skills?

[LadyStoicIsBack]

I'm not asking from a judgmental standpoint before I get flamed but rather a very genuine 'I just don't get it' kind of way...

I went to a bog standard inner city primary school and before I left, so age 11, knew the difference between words such as you're, your, there, their, and they're (alongside aisle as opposed to isle as another example); yet all of those being used incorrectly seems to be increasingly commonplace. And that confuses me as I know my primary education was nothing special and very def. know I do not know all I'd like to yet I'm (maybe incorrectly?) assuming that all others born into same system would have had the same basic education and thus would know the difference* between their own their/they're/there??? And no, I very definitely did not have any fucking kind of support 'additional parental support' so I don't think that can be the variable either.

So has basic Primary education got worse, or is it I'm just getting old or something and thus noticing it more? Genuinely curious as to other's equally anecdotal observations or their professional experience of this.

[*I'm obviously not referring to anyone for whom English is a second language, nor anyone like DS3 who has SEN]

I genuinely don't think it's any worse now than when I was at school (I'm in my mid-30s). I am a secondary school teacher and when I mark jotters, there are pupils who have near-perfect spelling, some who misspell the odd word here or there (or put 'there' instead of 'their') and there are some who cannot spell well at all. No different now than 20/30/40 years ago, I'd bet. It's probably just more noticeable because we read much more online user-generated content.

I wonder if the prevalence of spelling mistakes that you see online is down to the fact that in pre-internet days, people who struggled with their spelling or were less literate, generally avoided writing as they perhaps didn't feel confident or had no need to write. The internet becoming widespread has given those people a voice. It is almost impossible to avoid typing nowadays, what with social media and forums for every subject under the sun. It also blurred the lines between correct spelling and grammar with text speak and slang, making it even harder for those less able to spell to negotiate correct spellings.

Hosts thanks I will give them ago tomorrow with dd, might come back and ask you all to mark my work ...

Never to old to learn

Grrrrr used to drive me bonkers when we got abusive messages from DH ex wife with ridiculous spelling mistakes.
Think: 'your just married to their farther your not there stepmother and never will be CARNT you understand that'
And she regularly posted FB updates referring to my DH as a 'sperm donner'

I come across kids every day at work who ask me to write down basic spellings for them or who don't actually know how to spell their own names....

janey their own names? How old are they?!

proud you just carn't take messages like that seriously, can you?

I keep seeing people saying that as long as you can understand what someone is trying to say then the spelling and grammar doesn't matter.

On FB the other day a friend posted a photo of a tasty looking lunch. Someone commented "Wears are share lol" and I had to read it several times before I could figure out what it was supposed to say!

sperm donner

Carnt breath.

Totally agree op

insan that's interesting because I am also late forties and although we had weekly spelling tests through middle school (so to age 12), I don't remember a single grammar test. Nor do I remember being taught much grammar. I wonder if it is a regional thing? Although to be fair I did go to a particularly poor comp.

Broadly speaking I would say that whilst my spelling is competent, my grammar is foggy and my syntax mangled.

I'm not that sure it is such a new thing though. I used to work in a town where there were areas of multiple deprivation, and where 18% of the population have poor literacy levels. These are people of all ages and the problems are frequently intergenerational. Unsurprisingly people with poor literacy have worse access to education, jobs, money and health services.

I don't think it can all be the fault of spell checkers and predictive text. I believe though that the intranet and social media mean we communicate with people from wide social backgrounds, whereas in RL our social groups are more likely to be drawn from similar backgrounds to ourselves, where people have roughly equivalent educational experience. The poor spelling might stand out, because it is not what we see amongst our peer group and so the narrative that standards have declined takes hold.

Would of , could of , should of - this gives me the rage (my problem I know )

Think of YOUR and OUR - if it's not yours it's ours - same letters

You're is you are

It's always should have never should of same with would have not would I of - or would've should've

There/ if not here - again same letters
Their has a I so belongs to someone
They're - they are

They're going to their house over there

I think it's down to the insistence of the BBC on having authentic regional accents and not to hire people with RP anymore.

It's easy to spell if you speak 'properly', or hear the correct received pronunciation.
We were made learn 10s of 1000s of spellings and tables in school. Back then, (yes, in the Middle Ages), teachers weren't so interested in our opinions, at all and we were actively educated. I learned a lot by singsong repetition. Libraries played a big part in our lives too.

However I have to say, my dcs cannot spell basic words like what and where and who, as they drop their aitches.... oh, the shame.
I blame the parents and the nanny who didn't have PR wotcha? gotcha!

I'll RTFT tomorrow, but I can say that as a primary teacher, we're not really "allowed" to teach grammar the way we used to i.e. the way I learned it which was by doing lots of written grammar and punctuation exercises and rote learning.
It makes my blood boil tbh.
If you get "caught" using a textbook rather than an interactive, all-singing, all-dancing lesson; well, God forbid!!!!

Buttered we had Sound Sense books that we did religiously every week in early primary. They were pretty boring and repetitive from what I remember though.I'm trying to remember the scheme we did that followed them.

I think the follow on series was Haydn Richards Junior English

insan1 I struggle to understand how your ds can't see the difference between They're/there/Their. He is clearly very intelligent.
I could never in a million years get A's in any exam but once I was taught the differences between the "theres" it stayed with me. Where is it going wrong?
My dbro can't spell, yet we were educated in the same school at the same time and had the same parents

Air I think that's a big part of it. Having passed through the era when the video was going to be the medium of communication, we've rather unexpectedly happened upon a world where the world is expressing itself in the written word. We either need to unclench and embrace the Elizabethan flexibility towards spelling or decode to treat it as a religion.
People are writing. That's good. We're exchanging information. That's good.
SPaG horror's a bit Daily Mail 'Paedo' horror.
It's always been there. My relatives in the last century were illiterate. Let's not get too excited about people who type 'of' instead of 'have'.

Venus that's incredibly offensive and wrong.

Did you really mean to imply that only RP speakers can spell correctly?

Because I have daily empirical evidence in my professional life that both halves of that equation are untrue.

English spellings come from lots of roots. An RP accent doesn't necessarily give an advantage. Besides, RP is a regional accent just like any other historically, it's just that it's currently enjoying a higher social status. There is no inherent linguistic superiority.

It's interesting for me as we are living outside of the UK where English is a foreign language to 99% of the population. It's very interesting seeing the difference for DD who did three years schooling in the UK and now three years here.

When I went to school (UK late 70's) spelling and grammar were a big thing. I am still traumatised by only getting 99/100 on the sponsored spell. Although I'll never get dinosaur wrong again.

A large part of my job in the UK was proofreading documents although I had to use Wikipedia and a teacher friend to explain the difference of past tenses of verbs to DD for a test - I'm English, I just use them. But here they have to rote learn them (200 x 3 in her case).

Only 4 years later however when my sister went to (the same) school spelling, grammar and punctuation had been purposely phased out to allow for more "expression". To this day she can write a "sentence" which should actually be several paragraphs. There was actually an instruction to teachers that no more than three misspelled words should be highlighted in any piece of work (from recollection at the same time red pens couldn't be used by teachers; and green ones used instead as it was less upsetting for children).

I completely agree with a PP who stated about a reduction in editorial oversight. I can feel the rage coming on at many "respected" online sites and that's without the rest of whatever people read on the internet these days. I remember telling girls in my Guide company to just read whatever they could lay their hands on - even if it's a comic it should have the correct spelling. That's now not the case :(

I'm afraid I'm not a big phonetics fan either. English is not a phonetic language.

I mark GCSEs, and having to give a fairly good SPaG mark for something littered with errors makes me cross.

It was noticeable that teachers with O levels could spell, and the younger cohort with GCSEs found it challenging or thought it didn't matter, when I was teaching.

2Striped I went to school from 1970, but in secondary we had an old fashioned English teacher who used to give us a grammar lesson a week. We used to parse sentences, delve into the intricacies of subordinate clauses, and unravel the mystery of when to use a semi colon, or an Oxford comma. I wish I had paid more attention. Mr White, you rocked!

I also did two MFLs, which helped with the grammar.

My dp comes from a very good family, well educated etc but his spelling is just atrocious.
I actually cringe sometimes at his texts, he's very good at his job and is bright but just can't spell well.

My ds has asd, at primary school they were given a list of 10 spellings each week to learn, he never brought them home as looked at them once and remembered

He's now 13 and secondary doesn't seem to push spelling much.

Dd is 5 and about to go into year one at the same school my ds ( and I ) attended so we shall see.

There seems to have been a major push at our school over the last year due to a downgraded ofsted report.

My biggest bugbear is "are Joe Bloggs is 10 today " etc instead of "our" though accept this phrase can be regional. Everything here is "our"
For some reason.