anyone want to join me in grumble about the quality of other people's written work

[hatwoman]

quality of language, analysis, strategy all up for discussion. Blaming A levels, universities, your own work-place training all invited. Awarding of points out of 10 particularly enouraged. I had to spend all sodding day today reading something for publication that I seriously would give about 3/10. just. it was appalling. record sentence (yes I took to counting, it was that bad) was 63 words long. yep. SIXTY-THREE. and, in case you missed it, this is for EXTERNAL PUBLICATION.

[fortyplus]

Oh... I've posted this once before, so sorry if you've seen it already...

Have you heard about Which Tyler - the leader of the Pedants' revolt?!

[slug]

My thesis supervisor is always commenting on the fluency of my written work. That would be because I am over 40 and was taught properly how to spell, punctuate and construct gramatically correct sentences.

I remember dh's comment on an essay an MSc student gave him to read. "Well, all the words were English"

Today, in my tutorial for my A level computing class, I am teaching them tense. Last week it was articles, definite and indefinite. It's not a lot to do with computing, but an awful lot to do with passing exams.

[Greensleeves]

I am 29, and am also able to spell, punctuate and construct gramatically correct sentences.

[tribpot]

I'm 34 and likewise. We weren't taught very much grammar at school, which made learning languages at university level quite difficult. Hence I had to learn English grammar first!

[somethingunderthebedisdrooling]

to hand it to primary teachers (in state schools) the children are coming in year on year with a stronger understanding of basic grammar jargon which secondary teachers can build on. eventhough they were not taught grammar in school themselves, they are broadening their own understanding and passing it on the children.

i feel hopeful as i can percieve the difference.

still though 14 yr olds can tell you what an adjective is and does, they have difficulties picking them out of sentences. it makes hell of hard work to make their adjectives agree in number and person with their nouns and that they must follow it (when teaching MFL).

i showed these examples to top set yr 8 last week
blue basket
angry man
tennis player
drunken party

i started to despair all over again as they could only relate to the first one as an adj.

[puddle]

I'm almost 40 and wasn't taught any grammar at all at school.

When I did my degree I had to do a course in phonetics and was extremely hampered by my rudimentary knowledge - limited to 'a verb is a doing word and an adjective is a describing word'.

I do however have an intinctive sense of good sentence structure, punctuation etc and attribute this to having my head firmly in a book from 6 onwards.

[edam]

Quite, Puddle. If you read a lot, you absorb many of the rules without actively studying them.

[porpoise]

But it's not just grammar and spelling, is it?
I get really wound up by 'marketing speak', too. You know, using loads of multi-syllable words where one simple plain one would do.
Just had to read an email in which someone asked me to 'populate a chart' and 'manage X's expectations'.
Why couldn't she just ask me to fill in a spreadsheet and tell X when I think I'll have it done?
Grrr!

[slug]

Which is where most of my students fail. Read? Them? Ask them to read more than a sentence and you get the distinct waft of the stench of burning martyr.

[puddle]

How does that happen Slug? what makes them so reluctant to read?

I am really trying to pass on my love of reading to both my children but they are still young - 4 and 6 - and it's relatively easy at this age...I had to take Harry Potter away from my son last night and put it on a high shelf as he wouldn't stop reading it

[slug]

I blame games and the internet. It's the instant entertainment generation. They have such short attention spans that the concept of concentrating on anything for more than 3 minutes is an anethema to them.

We were discussing this at work the other day. There is a definite generation gap between those of us who read on the train and those who listen to music. Listening to music does not require quite the same effort and concentration as reading.

Students these days (gosh I sound old) expect to be entertained. As teachers we are taught to divide lessons into short exciting chunks to keep their attention. I think, personally, that we are shooting ourselves in the foot by doing this.

[edam]

Don't know about the train thing. Listen to music isn't something that's unique to 'young people today' - I used to have my walkman turned up when I was a lass!

[slug]

What did you do pre-walkman?

[Greensleeves]

Some of your remarks are rather ageist, slug. I am 29 and have a good grasp of grammar, punctuation and spelling. I also read on the train. I have friends of the same age who are similarly competent in English - and I have come across many older people who can barely string a sentence together and never read (unless you include the Yellow Pages).

Generalisations are almost invariably crap, though.

[Earthymama]

I went to a grammar school so mine is obviously brill! Boom Boom!! Oh No, am reverting to school humour now!!

40+, I didn't understand the Big Elephants thing though; can you explain please?

[WigWamBam]

I've just started another thread complaining about the random mis-use of apostrophes by dd's TA. She wrote a couple of book titles in dd's reading record last week - "Billy Get's Cross" and "The Missing Shoe's".

Apparently the teacher thinks that it's nothing to worry about because the children (Year 1) are too young for it to be a problem. I find that very sad indeed.

[slug]

Not really. We were making a point about who reads on the train and who doesn't. As a rule the loder you are the more likely you are to read rather than listen to music and the more likely you are to have a) a longer attention span and b)Is more likely to be good at spelling and grammar.

In my experience as a teacher, the students I encounter who enjoy reading, have far better written English, regardless of the course thy are on, than those who do not. Sadly, the longer I teach, the rarer these students are becomming.

[slug]

Arrgh. That would be older not loader

[somethingunderthebedisdrooling]

B E C A U S E

Big Elephants...

[CorrieDale]

My DH would agree with you there, Slug. He's an academic and is constantly peeved by how much he has to spoon-feed his students - even the MSc ones. His view is that degree level students should be able to think for themselves. This is, however, not a view commonly held at any of the universities he has taught at. Or at least, it may well be held by the academics but the students complain like hell if they're expected to do their own research, and the academics are then told to lower their expectations.

[clerkKent]

How many people need to produce gramatically correct English on a day-to-day basis? Almost all my written communication at work is by email, where standards are very low. It is very important in a CV - we reject every CV that has any kind of spelling or grammatical error for some posts. It is important in business proposals. But otherwise it is not particularly important at work.

Perhaps it is not important enough in exams - if children lost substantial marks for this kind of error, then teachers would prioriotize it (as slug has). But that would be at the price of losing something else e.g. A level computing (as an side, having worked in computing for many years I can confirm that the ability to produce an unambiguous specification is vital to a systems analyst).

[hooleymama]

I read a lot (more before I had Hooley boy),not sure if I write well, probably more stylish than gramatically correct because that's how many modern novels are written.

train spotting for instance.

mum had a good education & would pick me up on poor grammar (which made me stand out a bit where I grew up)so I think parental input is a huge unfluence..I only have to listen to people around me in the street to realise that

But hey ho - language is an ever evolving thing, and the most important bit is to make it understandable to someone who, ostensibly, speaks the same language you do.

I guess grammar + syntax is the language equivalent of the quality system

[hooleymama]

corriedale- wouldn't it be nice if research methods were part of the national curriculum - or is it now?

[thehairybabysmum]

I must be dim too...still dont get the big elephants...shouldn't there be a 'C' in there?

[WigWamBam]

Big Elephants ...