Spelling/grammar mistakes by teachers

[UnquietDad]

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.

Can we add this teacher to the list?!

here

In the book that dd brings home for me to write in and for the teacher to read and respond in she spelt the word tomato as "tomatoe". Some of her grammar hasn't been that good either. Makes me wonder how she'll be teaching the children in her class, it's reception year too so they need a good grounding.

i remember at junior school our teacher explainig the present continuous tense (e.g. i am singing) - he said you just add 'ing' but then explained there are exceptions. he asked for examples of exceptions and i suggested 'beginning' (needing an extra 'n').

he argued that it should be 'begining'. being the bolshy git i always have been i made him get the dictionary out...

I wrote a story at school with someone saying "you should of done it". Teacher corrected it to "should have".
Told her, I know that's right, but I was using colloquial speech - how the person would have said it in my story. She replied that no-one speaks like that, they all say "should have".
Er.....do you listen to any of us speak miss?

She also scrawled "SEXIST" all over one page because I'd put that the mum in the story had bought Bunty comic for her little girl and The Beano for her little boy.
Hmmm.....ask how many lads in this class subscibe to Bunty miss, go on...ask them!

It probably goes back to when they stopped teaching grammar properly in schools. The generation who were taught badly now teach our children and it worsens. Writing skills seem to be dropping off the priority list.

At 15 my step daughter didn't even know what an essay was ..

let's just shoot all teachers eh?

they're obviously all crap.

No just the politicians..

Bang I'm dead. Every 15 year old I teach knows what an essay is...

And 14 yeard olds? Like I say it's the politicians who dictate the curriculum.

Her friends are choosing hair and beauty as a GCSE subject ..

They should spend less time learning computer skills and more time learning the language skills to put onto it imho

To be honest, all my students at GCSE level know how to write an essay - all most of the Year 8 and 9s. I think it may be a school issue - if you're worried, call her English teacher.

i mean it's not actually very difficult to use a computer you just need to read a manual, and they try and start them at 3..

You'd be amazed how much grammar is now required of the curriculum - since the Literacy strategy has come through from the lower key stages, I find the students really do know much more about it.

I would call them immediately, it's a problem with the class, they are being rushed through subjects, there's no real engagement, the teachers sick and they have a supply. They're behind so they're pushing on with what they need to cover. I can't intervene as I'm not the actual parent and my dp doesn't rate English in the same way (he's a physician). Step dd says she's not any good at English. It's not true she's just not been engaged in my opinion.

I've offered to coach her myself but she's decided that English isn't her subject, which is really sad.

I'm pleased there's more grammar. My mother isn't English speaking and she was always appalled at how poor grammar teaching was (she was a French teacher). She said she had to cover the basics of English Grammar before she could start on the French.

That's a real shame - a knock in confidence can affect plenty of other subjects. I would talk to the Head of English if you haven't already, and ask if it's possible for another English teacher to take the class for a while (if we're talking about long-term absnce issues here) - that's what we did when we had a similar problem. For what it's worth, I wouldn't insist your dd moves to another class - she may well do better to stay where she is and may feel in the spotlight...

I am amused by the persons complaining about bad pronunciation and grammar. Those same persons whose posts are littered with uncapitalised sentences and the overuse and misuse of ellipses.

Perhaps those in glass houses...

(That is a correct use of an ellipis, by the way.)

lol

I know, English imho is a really important subject to learn especially with regards to analysis, developing opinions and learning to write a coherent argument ..vital life skills.

Fair point but it's about context, different skills required for text and chat..

I blame my english teacher ..