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”.

Well I'm a grammar pedant, so I am going to have a certain take on this news.

I was quite insulted by the idea that writing "proper" English was considered to be a white middle class male thing, given that I am female.

I think anyone can learn to write proper English and those with dyslexia or other learning difficulties that don't affect their ability to eg perform well at a Maths degree are given help at university, or should be.

Education does seem to be a race to the bottom at times.

However, I think this has more to do with wanting to attract lucrative Chinese students who pay high fees but have limited English.

As for schools, I think my son learnt more grammar at primary school than I did - having to do the SPAG test as part of SATS concentrated a few minds I think. Michael Gove wasn't as stupid as people thought he was.

I have seen loads of times on here people say that they have thrown CVs in the bin because of poor literacy. I'm not sure I'm doing my students any favours if I tell them not to bother themselves with spelling and grammar

That’s a very good point.

The judge, said the defendant, was drunk.
The judge said the defendant was drunk.

People are talking as though current expectations are that all undergraduates can express themselves effectively, eruditely, and with perfect grammar and punctuation. This is so far from true as to be laughable. I was a humanities student and had done very well in English language and literature before university. I still didn’t learn about the difference between less and fewer until my mid-20s to give one example. I still feel uncertain about punctuation.

I feel quite angry that education has failed so badly that speaking and writing well is viewed as an embarrassing sign of elitism. I felt frustrated that nobody had ever taught me basic things about grammar and punctuation. I wanted to learn because I care.

All of this at decent schools, so I can only imagine the poor standards in economically deprived areas. So unfair as it doesn’t give students with potential the tools to showcase it as well as they could. I think what is being proposed is a great idea - if the universities put resources into improving students’ English. Just accepting low standards is harmful to everyone.

Interestingly, I spent some time in the US and pretty much everything I knew up to university level came from those years as spag was taken far more seriously.

Being a grammar pedant is nothing to be proud of. I've taught languages for 24 years and know quite a lot about grammar. That doesn't mean I'm a pedant, fortunately.

It's good in theory that grammar is being taught in primary schools. However, in practice, it seems to involve teachers who probably don't know much about it themselves cramming grammar teaching (some of it of questionable value) into children's brains for the SATs and then never mentioning it again. I can't comment specifically on Michael Gove's IQ, but I could certainly make some other choice comments about him.

People are quick to cite “ethnic minorities” as if they are a homogenous mass. Ime a lot of the kids’ spelling and grammar is first class, including those with English as a second language.

I was working in preen one of the worst schools in the country, and the literacy of most of the year 11s was dreadful. I simply can’t understand how the kids (poor white) had reached the age of 15/16 and were illiterate. Something had gone badly wrong somewhere. These kids were at school every day, year in, year out, and could barely read.

Of course the less academic will always be with us, but it is concerning that those who are supposed to be of university standard have such poor English. Someone with a degree in English from an RG university and an MA asked me to look at her CV as she was hoping to go into publishing. My hair stood on end.

What is 'ethnic minority' English?

Are people from minority ethnic backgrounds unable to learn to spell correctly? Are people from minority ethnic backgrounds unable to cope with grammar?

If someone is taking computer science why would you care about their grammar anyway?

If there is one subject where understanding the importance of precision and attention to detail is imperative...

I’d like to know, if being able to write fluently and use grammar correctly doesn’t matter at degree level, when does it matter? Where are people supposed to learn these skills if not at school and not at university? Or is it perfectly fine if the jobs where it matters are inadvertently reserved for the middle class elites who happen to have picked them up along the way? Precise use of English matters in my job. I write requirements for technical solutions. If they are ambiguous because I’ve used the wrong word, or constructed a sentence in a way that means it can be misinterpreted, the whole solution could fail at a cost of millions.

I have seen a presentation, written by an English graduate to outline how they will work with other members of staff to improve their written English, that was littered with spelling and grammar mistakes. Nobody else in the audience spotted them. I’ve seen copy that was full of mistakes be approved for publication. And I’ve also seen advice on how to spot phishing and identity fraud attempts suggest that poor spelling and grammar is a good indicator.

This stuff matters. If we pretend it doesn’t, something is lost, and that something isn’t trivial elitism.

The plural of Curriculum Vitae is, I believe, Curricula Vitae, so referring to CVs is incorrect.

@Shelddd

Some uni programs have 90-95% international students and the level of English they need is shockingly low. Even if they don't have good enough English language score to get a visa the university is allowed to do their own assessment or have them do a short course and allow them to get a visa anyway. This means there are quite a few people already in UK universities with English at very very low levels. Way lower than anything you would see from a domestic student.

If someone is taking computer science why would you care about their grammar anyway? But you should be able to mark someone down if they are doing a degree i
Englishh or some other fluffy degrees with no clear career path. Those degrees offer no upward mobility for people anyway.

There's a difference between 'no direct career path' and 'no career path.' The majority of English graduates aren't unemployed! I studied English and classmates (just over a decade after graduating) are lecturers, managing directors, fairly senior in the civil service, in publishing, several have done law conversation degrees, one is working for the UN, etc. All pretty good to excellent jobs! Even those who are 'just' teachers ('just' because they were the most standard career paths) have steady jobs - you must be pretty snobby if you don't think a professional job on a permanent contract with a lot of holidays doesn't represent upward mobility for someone whose parents worked on zero hours in a shop, or were a single mum and worked as a cleaner. It's also the 6th most common degree for MPs in the current parliament.

@MasterBeth But how do universities judge "what you can bring to the subject" other than by the quality of the student's analysis, of whatever subject they are studying. I absolutely agree that in lots of cases, if someone speaks up and has interesting views and the confidence to express them in tutorials they may be the more interesting student to teach and might get more from the course than someone who just writes a grammatically correct essay. But a) this would require a change in marking to be more engagement based (which has its own issues in terms of potential bias/inequality) and b) with most unis not interviewing potential candidates how do you choose between them before you have a chance to work out who will 'bring something' to the course?

@MasterBeth

You are quite right.

@expectopelargonium

If you want to study for a degree, then you need to have a high enough standard of written English, otherwise you shouldn't be going to university in the first place.

I agree completely. I truly despair for university lecturers who have to spend a semester or more having to teach virtual ‘remedial’ English to students who’ve already had eleven years of full time education.

So many ‘widening participation’ strategies are purely for political purposes. As a nation we need to accept that not everyone is suitable for higher academic education, and other technical or apprenticeship routes can lead to equal or even more lucrative employment opportunities.

However, in practice, it seems to involve teachers who probably don't know much about it themselves....

Because they were never taught it. What you need is a task force of teachers in their sixties or older who did learn about nouns, verbs, and so on at primary school, to run training sessions.

(When someone in my class at primary school couldn't remember what a verb was, the teacher told her to stand up and jump up and down. She remembered then that a verb was a 'doing word', and so did the rest of us.)

[quote OpusAnglicanum]@MasterBeth

You are quite right.[/quote]
Actually, I withdraw that.

I said Russell Group University, using the capital, to indicate the inflated importance my employers place on being in the Russell Group. It was a stylistic decision.

@lazylinguist

The irony of your misspelling ‘altar’ towards the end of that diatribe.

And the mistake in the title.

Is it not rather insulting to suggest we ought to expect lower standards from these groups?

No. Either those groups are significantly more likely to have had worse schooling, or they are not. If they are, then there is not a level playing-field. That is not a failing on the part of the students concerned, so why should it be considered insulting?

It's all very well to say we should be improving literacy in schools. Do you not think schools are always trying to do that? There is no immediate or magic solution to the obstacles which make that difficult. Saying 'Oh yes, we must do something about that!' is not going to help the thousands of disadvantaged children in the meantime.

And the missing punctuation. Dontcha just love it when that happens? An OP who has used the longest, poshest words (in their opinion) they can think of to show how clever they are. Good to see Muphry is alive and well.

Ahh. This is close to my heart as I teach Academic English and Academic Skills at a Russell Group uni.

Basically, I try to enable students to express their complex ideas in a comprehensible way. They need to understand structure and need to be able to demonstrate criticality. Those two skills will always trump grammar and spelling in my book. Coherence and cohesion are the holy grail!

I work with both international and domestic students and, honestly, it can be much of a muchness. International students are much more focused and responsive when it comes to ‘technical’ advice and seem to really understand WHAT they need to do. Domestic students often struggle with the bigger picture, but are more successful when they get it.

@Tinydinosaur I find your point very valid and important! I hope more start to think this way.

@UserEleventyNine

Why is the standardisation of discourse more important than the quality of the ideas expressed

It doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you can't express them in a way that people can understand.

My essay writing has been a steep learning curve.

Essay writing was taught in the Sixth Form when I was at school. Even those who were doing science subjects had one class a week where they were taught essay writing skills and were required to write an essay as homework.

Essay writing wasn't taught to me. Not as a specific lesson. Many other students on my course are the same. Some of the younger students were taught essay writing. But interestingly the more mature students seem to be doing better mid way through the course.

It's a skill like any other. It's possible to teach someone who has the capability but not the skills, the skills they need.

I think the issue is this idea that everyone should go to university. They clearly shouldn't. I work in FE and so many of our learners cannot think deeply about the subject they are studying; fashion for example. It's all very on the surface and so many of them can't critique or understand context or history or ideas development. We try and teach this, but some students don't have these thinking skills, and really struggle to learn them. These comprehension and analytics skills are more important than literacy in many ways. These students still want to go to uni.

Oh, and sadly, reading to babies and children is on the decline. I read a book about it recently, and the explosion of vocabulary and ability to discuss and explore ideas, that reading to small children creates, is amazing. Conversely, lack of reading has an enormous negative impact.

Basically, I try to enable students to express their complex ideas in a comprehensible way. They need to understand structure and need to be able to demonstrate criticality. Those two skills will always trump grammar and spelling in my book. Coherence and cohesion are the holy grail!

I'm not a stickler for prescriptive grammar. Errors like splitting the infinitive, for eg., would have been corrected once upon a time but now largely pass without comment. Without comprehensible grammar, though, there is no cohesion. No matter how brilliant the ideas an essay contains, if a reader is constantly hiccupping over faulty syntax then they're not going to find it easy to follow an argument. Especially if half the thing is written in sentence fragments. Like this. As often happens in undergraduate writing. When their written work takes the form of their speech.

Universities are one place where pedantry does and should have its rightful place (an internet message board where members correct others as some form of snide putdown, not so much). As for the flowery academic syntax mentioned upthread, that might have been the case in the 70s and 80s but trends ebb and flow and it's now seen as pompous and ostentatious. The same goes for overuse of jargon. Any academic peer could tell you this sort of style achieves the reverse of making writer seem clever, which isn't unlike correcting strangers' grammar on the internet.

I was, however, exceptional at maths and science, which was enough right up to university. Then all of a sudden I also needed to be good at English. Which is honestly bullshit. I understood the topics, I could explain, but because I didn't pretty it up, I scored lower.

If you are diagnosed with dyslexia then most universities have special concessions in marking for content and understanding rather than grammar and expression, unless these impede meaning.

@Pottedpalm

The plural of Curriculum Vitae is, I believe, Curricula Vitae, so referring to CVs is incorrect.

No, it isn’t. The abbreviation CV forms its own plural.

It depends what one means by 'good English' though really doesn't it?

The odd spelling/grammatical error - fine.

Misused apostrophes all over the place, their/there/they're/are/our/your/you're consistently incorrectly used, distinct lack of punctuation and paragraphs - if you have got to 18 and haven't got those things, then you are not going to learn them at university, that's not what university is for.

I agree.

Standards have slipped so badly. Correct spelling and grammar isn’t elitist - it’s just correct! And you need it for many jobs, especially in the professions.

My Granny was born in 1925 to a humble family in Sussex. When I was growing up she told me about how she used to use Sussex dialect words, and was told by a neighbour that when she went to High School she’d learn the “right” way to speak. She did, and it stood her in good stead.

Different accents are fine, but incorrect grammar isn’t and should be challenged.

Also, posters who are saying it doesn’t matter if you can’t spell if you’re studying maths or a science are massively missing the point.

Loads of graduates go on to train as teachers, do law conversions or train as journalists etc - all those jobs require good spelling and grammar! Someone may get a 2.1 in maths and train for the Bar - for which their written work needs to be truly superb; no point pretending it doesn’t matter.