Universities no longer to required to expect good written/spoken English as it is “elitist”

[jacks11]

I have just read this in The Times. I am appalled! I think this is a retrograde step. Apparently it is to close the attainment gap between higher and lower socio-economic groups and also between white and other ethnic groups. Is it not rather insulting to suggest we ought to expect lower standards from these groups?

Surely, if we have identified that there is an issue in terms of literacy/communication, then we should focus on improving those in schools. For those struggling at university, provision should be made to support the student to gain these skills. For those who have a genuine SEN (e.g. dyslexia) it is obviously appropriate to have particular arrangements for that student. What is ludicrous is suggesting literacy and accuracy in both oral and written work is no longer required. To suggest it is “elitist” is, in my view, a travesty.

At university level you must be able to communicate clearly and proficiently in both oral and written work. It is not a “nice to have”. It is essential for many reasons. I fear this country is becoming devoid of all sense and rigour, sacrificed on the supposed alter of “inclusiveness” and “fairness”- utterly wrongly. Inclusiveness can be achieved in far more sensible and effect ways.

I don’t understand why expecting literacy and a clear grasp of written and spoken English at university level is “elitist”.

I can't see a mistake in the title?

@AcornAutumn

I can't see a mistake in the title?

“No longer to required”.

I work at a uni and you would be amazed at the number of British third year/masters students whose grammar and spelling are worse than my 10 year olds, but markers are told they cannot penalise students for this.

I think there's a misunderstanding here - what is important that regional accents and language differences don't disadvantage students. I've heard with my own ears a lecturer say to a student they couldn't give them a high mark unless they speak properly, this young person spoke properly, they just were from Newcastle!

A big problem is that a huge proportion of the university students are not from the UK and/or speak English as a second language. Many of these students have a very poor command of English. Despite being poor, this command is often sufficient to comunicate a good understanding of the subject being studied. How do we grade such students? Universities are businesses now. Penalising such students for poor English will just make them go elsewhere, depriving UK universities of a huge income. Devising some kind of system that penalises native English speakers but not the non-native ones is untenable.

Overall, however, I would say that the national curriculum in schools should focus a lot less on "fronted adverbials" and the rest of archane terminology and more on teaching students how to put their thoughts into words. And university education ideally should be expanded to four years to make space for training in writing and maths and other general subjects like in the US universities. I always found a 3-year bachelor's degree in the UK incredibly quick. This is not how things are in most other countries. It's 4 years in the US, 5 years in Russia.

The OP isn’t writing an English assignment here though is she? So in my view is excused from mistakes.

When I mark an undergraduate assignment I expect it to have a good academic style, I expect it to have reasoned arguments including critical analysis depending on which year the student is in. I’m not going to fail someone for spelling errors but you do get an impression of who has proof read their assignment and who hasn’t and may deduct some marks accordingly.

Generally those who haven’t proof read as well as some spelling mistakes will also have some sentences which don’t quite make sense. One of my favourites was the nursing student who wrote an assignment about the role of the horse. I assume she meant nurse! 😂

Yabu. Especially with the spelling errors in your own post. There are potential students with great intellect and ideas, but who may struggle with literacy. Their literacy shouldn’t be a barrier to further education.

I suppose it would depend on how bad they are talking about? I have some relatives in the UK and I literally cannot decipher what they are trying to say when they post on facebook. It's literacy classes that people like that need not uni.
The odd grammar/spelling mistake, fine we are all human.

I think it’s a good idea. The first term or two could be a crash course in SPAG to give those kids who are bright but need a leg up a chance to level the playing field.

This would do a lot for social mobility.

@CausingChaos2

Yabu. Especially with the spelling errors in your own post. There are potential students with great intellect and ideas, but who may struggle with literacy. Their literacy shouldn’t be a barrier to further education.

Do you not think that literacy classes should be given first though? You might have great ideas but if you cannot communicate them then that is a problem when it comes to working surely?

We applied to put a Graduate job on a University jobs board - they asked us if we could remove the requirement to have a degree as it discriminated against those who were not educated to degree standards but might be able to do the job anyway (if a University isn't promoting the benefits of a degree who will?). What is the point of a degree is anyone else starting to wonder, why our kids are spending so much money to obtain one when even the universities can't see their worth?

Yanbu, you can’t communicate your ideas effectively without a decent level of literacy. The spelling and grammar checkers available in word etc make it so much easier for students nowadays.

To me a degree should demonstrate that you can work at a certain level and a lot of jobs require that you can produce reports and coherent written arguments, which you would expect someone with a degree to be able to do.

I think standards of education at school should be improved rather than entry requirements for universities lowering.

@jacks11

I have just read this in The Times. I am appalled! I think this is a retrograde step. Apparently it is to close the attainment gap between higher and lower socio-economic groups and also between white and other ethnic groups. Is it not rather insulting to suggest we ought to expect lower standards from these groups?

Surely, if we have identified that there is an issue in terms of literacy/communication, then we should focus on improving those in schools. For those struggling at university, provision should be made to support the student to gain these skills. For those who have a genuine SEN (e.g. dyslexia) it is obviously appropriate to have particular arrangements for that student. What is ludicrous is suggesting literacy and accuracy in both oral and written work is no longer required. To suggest it is “elitist” is, in my view, a travesty.

At university level you must be able to communicate clearly and proficiently in both oral and written work. It is not a “nice to have”. It is essential for many reasons. I fear this country is becoming devoid of all sense and rigour, sacrificed on the supposed alter of “inclusiveness” and “fairness”- utterly wrongly. Inclusiveness can be achieved in far more sensible and effect ways.

I don’t understand why expecting literacy and a clear grasp of written and spoken English at university level is “elitist”.

What’s your definition of “good English”? Too often it’s an arbitrary definition made by the educated elite about what they deem to be acceptable or comprehensible.

Why should working class or ethnic minority English be stigmatised? Why is the standardisation of discourse more important than the quality of the ideas expressed?

It would be better to address the issues around literacy while children are still at school, rather than expecting universities to dumb down.
It might be reasonable to offer a foundation year in order to raise literacy standards and prepare students for what is required. I don't see how a student could actually produce work that's worth anything, unless they can understand academic texts or articulate their pov using the appropriate language.
All this will do is devalue university education.

I agree re overseas students. My DD always made sure she wrote up group work as her uni science course had lots of Chinese students with poor written English.

I agree with you OP. Literacy standards have unfortunately been declining for some time. Because everything is done online these days and we all communicate through our phones, autocorrect doesn’t allow students to notice or self-correct their spelling when they get it wrong. They’re simply not used to recognising a misspelt word or grammatical error. Text speak and slang is also becoming more and more integrated into normal conversation. Most of all, a decline in comprehension is the most worrying issue. It transcends all subjects. Good command of literacy helps you understand all subjects better. You can understand exactly what the question is asking you, you can understand nuance, subtly, bias, emphasis etc. Literacy skills is not simply spelling and grammar, it’s an incredibly useful life skill.

For the previous posters who mentioned EAL students or overseas students at universities, it’s rarely these demographics that are contributing to the decline in literacy. If anything, their literacy is often far superior due to often better schooling, different cultural values and emphasis placed upon education, high standards and learning, lack of complacency or laziness etc. Speaking a second language (especially a Romance language) is also often a cognitive advantage and helps them pick up English much quicker as well as other learning skills. The problem in literacy decline is of course across the board but more to do with our native speakers in this country.

@HairyChair

We applied to put a Graduate job on a University jobs board - they asked us if we could remove the requirement to have a degree as it discriminated against those who were not educated to degree standards but might be able to do the job anyway (if a University isn't promoting the benefits of a degree who will?). What is the point of a degree is anyone else starting to wonder, why our kids are spending so much money to obtain one when even the universities can't see their worth?

Neither “graduate” and “university” should take a capital here and the punctuation in your final sentence is all over the place.

Particularly in subjects like physics and other sciences, advancement of the field is the priority, they're pushing out people who would be exceptional scientists, because they're not good at something that is mostly irrelevant.

So a scientist will never have to publish research or write a report or apply for a research grant or funding or give a lecture or presentation or train other scientists?

If you're making discoveries which advance knowledge, you have to tell people about them, so you need to be able to communicate clearly in speech and writing.

Why should working class or ethnic minority English be stigmatised? Why is the standardisation of discourse more important than the quality of the ideas expressed?

Because language is important - words have specific meaning and it's impossible to read and learn or accurately convey meaning to others if you have poor literacy skills.

In the 17 years I’ve been lecturing, I’ve never been permitted to deduct marks for poor spelling or grammar. It’s not in the mark scheme for assignments. We’re not testing students on their ability to spell. That said, we’d obviously prefer it if they could communicate their arguments successfully and so we do encourage “readability” and coherence, and we provide workshops on academic writing for our students.

I am currently a university student, studying a foundation year to go on to eng lit and philosophy.

I am 43. I did OK in GCSEs (8 x Bs, 1 C) and poorly in A levels for a variety of reasons. But I would class myself as intelligent and articulate. However, when I was doing GCSEs spag wasn't important. My year 2 ds knows more about grammar than I do.

My essay writing has been a steep learning curve. Academic writing is a completely different skill set to any other type of writing and expecting students from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds (like mine) to be able to write in that style is unrealistic and will exclude many students. However expecting universities to provide the support and skills to get them to that standard is reasonable. I am lucky, my uni provides this support, especially in foundation year where they expect to have to do this.

@MasterBeth really useful thanks ill make a note somewhere

Aloe Literacy classes are a great idea but realistically, for some, literacy will never be their strong point. It’s more complicated than that too, how many students are truly skilled in literacy or just spell check their work?

@Fairyliz

It’s nothing to do with U.K. students it’s to allow more overseas students and their tuition fees in. Universities are no longer ‘seats of learning’ they are businesses it’s as simple as that. They get more money from overseas students so will be targeting them by lowering the English language requirements.

Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.