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Original poster

Spelling/grammar mistakes by teachers

76 replies

UnquietDad · 15/09/2006 09:14

These INFURIATE me beyond belief. These people are supposed to be teaching our children,and yet we sometimes get letters home with incorrect spellings, weird grammar and a slapdash approach to punctuation - especially apostrophes.

Question is - what do you do?

It's very difficult to make a stand without looking like some sort of ridiculously pedantic fusspot.

And it's not just the letters - there, staring me in the face every sodding day when dd goes into her classroom, is one of those big commercially-produced, laminated A1 charts with everyone's birthday on them and "Happy Birthday" in several languages. Trouble is, it says:

"WHO'S birthday is it today?"

Give me strength. I almost wanted to tear the bloody thing down.

And the French on it is wrong, so for all I know some of the other languages may be too.

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katierocket · 15/09/2006 09:20

There was a HUGE thread on this a while back. General consensus was - point it out!

southeastastra · 15/09/2006 09:23

that's really bad! point it out

singersgirl · 15/09/2006 09:37

DS2 (just 5 and in Y1) came home yesterday and said "Miss W says 'haitch', but it is really 'aitch', isn't it, Mummy?"

We have had words spelt wrong in vocabulary lists for stories ("trellice" instead of "trellis") and words with hyphens in that shouldn't have them on spelling tests.

hulababy · 15/09/2006 09:39

Point it out politely to the teacher. To be fair, it may not be the teacher who has created some of it - often non teaching staff are involved in stuff like this too. But as an ex-teacher I wouldn't have been offended if someone pointed it - everyone makes mistakes; even teachers are human!

Pixiefish · 15/09/2006 09:40

I'm a secondary English teacher with a Welsh degree as well and when I go on cover lessons around the school I see so many mistakes on whiteboards and wall displays. All teachers have to have English and Maths GCSE or equivalent so I can't understand it

Original poster
UnquietDad · 15/09/2006 09:43

Well, the chart definitely wasn't produced by the teacher - it's a bought one. I wouoldn't have wanted something with such a huge mistake up in my classroom, though, if it were me.

"Haitch" really boils my bodily fluids.

OP posts:
Pixiefish · 15/09/2006 09:45

As an aside my best friend from childhood has always called me 'Haitch'

fairyjay · 15/09/2006 09:48

At the hairdressers the other day, the guy cutting my hair kept telling me that it would be 'moderner'. I nearly killed him by the end of the afternoon. It was a crap haircut too!

acnebride · 15/09/2006 09:49

Get the governors on to it too - someone in the governors should be doing an English visit at some point - write them a letter, give them something to aim for in their visit!

wakeupandsmellthecoffee · 15/09/2006 20:25

what does modernity mean ? I heard this and did not have a clue .

Lilymaid · 15/09/2006 20:31

I used to correct teachers' spelling mistakes in red pen. This,no doubt, infuriated them but I wasn't too pleased to find that DS was supposed to learn the spelling of "chrysanthemum" (hope I've spelt that right) in a Y3 spelling test - a very useful word (for a would be florist/gardener).

NotQuiteCockney · 15/09/2006 20:36

"Haitch" is dialect, not incorrect.

Otherwise, yeah, point it out.

Sophiev73 · 15/09/2006 20:38

I teach and my ds1 goes to nursery on-site. Even they send me letters with mistakes in. Proving that we are all at times a) human and b) stupid.

aitch71 · 15/09/2006 20:38

yes it is aitch. definitely aitch.

my dh's mother is a head teacher and her spelling, grammar and punctuation are all dismal. but then she is a moron, so...

also, on the subject of hairdressers, the wee girl who was washing my hair the other day kept asking me questions then not listening to the answers so she was saying 'sorry?' about 15 times. 'how's that water for you?' 'fine' 'sorry?' 'fine' 'sorry?' 'It's FINE' 'sorry?' Etcetera, etcetera.

I eventually asked her why she felt the need to apologise and she genuinely did not know what i was referring to. Has 'sorry' completely replaced 'pardon'? When did that happen?

NotQuiteCockney · 15/09/2006 20:41

I think "aitch" is the generally accepted pronounciation, but "haitch" is an acceptable dialect/accent version. Complaining about it is equivalent to complaining about teachers with "common" accents.

aitch71 · 15/09/2006 20:46

tbh it's not something i come across - nobody really says 'haitch' where we live, i think it's more an English thing.
That said, if my DD was being taught by someone with a really thick Glasgow accent using dialect rather than proper English (i'm Glaswegian, by the way, so I've not plucked that example out of thin air) i would be a bit concerned.

singersgirl · 15/09/2006 23:28

Actually DH says 'haitch' - he's from Plymouth. So I agree it seems to be dialectal and was mortified at the idea that DS might have said something to the teacher.

I explained to DS2 that in some parts of the country people say 'haitch', but that where we live people don't.

On the other hand (and this is purely out of interest), I'm not sure why 'haitch' is dialectal. Which dialects does it belong to? Though no dialectician, I can't think of any dialect that attaches an aspirated 'h' to the start of words beginning with a vowel. I mean, nobody in DH's family says 'hate' for 'eight' in or 'hail' for 'ail'. So it's not like the use in Plymouth of the short 'u' sound in 'bully' and 'put' (for example).

littleducks · 16/09/2006 00:04

I always thought that 'haitch' was slang or lazy my mum told me off when i was little and said it (picked up at school) as it was to remind silly people the sound 'aitch' made!

ghosty · 16/09/2006 02:30

I think the regional accents thing is a difficult issue but one that you have to accept. I wouldn't have a problem with DS being taught by someone with a 'thick Glaswegian accent' as long as the teacher was a good one. I have had to bite the bullet with this one as my DS didn't start to have a New Zealand accent until he started school and started to read (2 years after moving here). When they did group reading the teacher would read, in her NZ accent, "The cet set on the met" so of course, DS came home saying, "The cet set on the met"! I couldn't and wouldn't correct him ... what kind of an ar$ey Brit would I be??? . He does, however, equate the sounds with the correct letters and will spell 'CET' as 'CAT' IYSWIM?
When I was teaching in the UK we had a laugh with a group of Year 3 children who suddenly started spelling words very bizarrely - it took us a while to work out that their new teacher (a kiwi) was the culprit so we did have to do something about that (point out to him that he needed to work on his vowel sounds when reading to the children as they were getting very confused)
Re. spelling mistakes that teachers make - it winds me up too and I ALWAYS point it out to them and no one has been offended. As someone said, teachers ARE human. DS's Year 1 teacher was the best teacher I have ever been in contact with (including my 10 years teaching experience) - she was phenomenal - but her weakness, by her own admission, was spelling and she positively welcomed people pointing out her mistakes.
UnquietDad - If I were in your shoes with that poster I would actually demand it be taken down and replaced.

threebob · 16/09/2006 02:37

I always have a laugh when ds's "what I did today" learning focus is spelt wrong. Why choose something you can't spell?

When ds's teacher told him their were no dinosaurs left in the world. Ds quietly went up to her after the mat time and told her the tuatara was a dinosaur and she could see one at the zoo - or he would bring her a picture if she was too busy to go.

Ghosty - ds will "read" his books (more memorised than read) in 2 different accents depending on who he is reading to. All the books my parents bought him are "boooooooks", and the ones from the library are "bucks".

ghosty · 16/09/2006 02:42

Threebob ... I just LOVE Bob ... he cracks me up

ghosty · 16/09/2006 02:43

PMSL at bringing picture of a tuatara to the teacher if she is too busy

hana · 16/09/2006 02:48

isn't it a bit much to correct mistakes with a red pen?
am a teacher and would never mind being told that I've made errors of any sort - would be terribly offended if something came back to me with red pen corrections!!

Twiglett · 16/09/2006 05:25

no Haitch is not due to dialect .. it happens up and down the country .. it is plainly lazy and wrong and should be corrected .. it is a result of poorly educated children

we no longer educate our children in grammar and punctuation so how can we expect our teachers to understand and use the english language correctly

YES address the pre-printed sheet .. take in stickers and cover up the mistakes

arrrrgggghhhhh

oh and PS .. Bob is just fab

curlew · 16/09/2006 05:57

My children learnt very young to be trilingual -posh so that I wouldn't correct their pronounciation, Yorkshire, to fit in with dp's enormous and extended Yorkshire family, and Kent/estuary for school. They switch between the three effortlessly and it doesn't seem to have any effect on their reading or spelling.
Having said that, there are what I consider appaling illiteracies in the National Curriculum -subjects called Numeracy and literacy, for a start! And what, pray, is "a recount" and how does one write one? (It's OK, I do know - I'm just taking another hobbyborse for some exercise!)