Are English standards declining in school?

[Salazaar]

Just out of interest, has anyone ever tried any of the constructed languages out there? Esperanto, Lojban or anything similar...?

[aidanjt]

I wouldn't waste my time learning irrelevant, fringe languages. It's like a programmer spending a year learning haskel, or D, or some rubbish like that.

[Steve]

I wouldn't waste my time learning irrelevant, fringe languages. It's like a programmer spending a year learning haskel, or D, or some rubbish like that.

I know Haskell, you insensitive clod!

[aidanjt]

I know Haskell, you insensitive clod!

You have my sympathies.

[Brucelles]

First point. There’s no excuse for really crappy posts on a forum. Download the spell checker plug in and get on with typing in English.

Secondly, English spelling looks complicated because of the cough, enough, through sort of thing, but these are, generally, logically considered standards or adaptations of words that came to English from French or German. You can do what the Americans did and simplify some words (colour => color) but that only catches about a dozen words and any more risks losing the precision of which our excellent language is capable.

Thirdly, English is the lingua franca nowadays, because it is actually efficient, easy to learn and very precise. Of course, the fact that America practices linguistic imperialism didn’t hurt. However the standard in international finance, shipping, air traffic control, programming languages, etc is English because it allows one to precisely describe something quickly and easily. Something that’s not possible in many other languages.

To me this means that the English language is a precious resource; one that shouldn’t be forked with. (Damn! I am sure I made a spelling error somewhere there, but spell check picked nothing up). Allowing students to get away with rubbish spelling is a dangerous thing if it allows them to start thinking that linguistic precision isn’t important.

When my daughter started university (doing Philosophy and English Lit.) one of her lecturers got so peeved with rubbish spelling and grammar that he decided to do a double marking exercise, where he marked each paper for spelling as well as content. Under normal circumstances he will deduct a maximum of 5% for spelling and grammar, but this time he deducted 0.5% for each mistake. Some students scored less than -200% on a 2,000 word essay. These were students with a good A-level in English. They were then given a chance to correct their essays and some still lost > 50% due to spelling and grammar.

I am with Saracen etc. in that I don’t double check posts on a forum, but in my professional life I expect one minor mistake every thousand words, and none that affect the meaning of the document.

I think poor English is unacceptable. If I get a CV with spelling mistakes, and the candidate is English, I bin it. I have had CVs from French, Polish, German, Swedish, Nigerian & Dutch people in the last 6 months, and they were all correctly presented, but the three English CVs I got, I had to throw away.

I don’t have to accept morons as employees at the moment, so I can reject CVs that imply to me that the applicant is one. If they can’t be bothered to get their CV right, I don’t expect that they will produce work I can use either.

[aidanjt]

I think poor English is unacceptable.

Why?

As I mentioned earlier, robustness is one of the prime qualities the English language provides. Even people who are learning English for the first time can usually produce sentences which, while broken, can still be understood.

People frequently rant about spelling errors, while failing to realise that, a) nobody writes perfect English 100% of the time, nobody. And b), that organic languages are inherently evolutionary. English 1,000 years ago was a *LOT* different from English today. Just as English in 1,000 years time will be a *LOT* different than it is today.

Linguistic purism is retarded, because there's no such thing as a 'pure' language.

[jim]

I think that poor English just looks lazy and unprofessional. At the end of the day, it isn't that difficult to look for spelling mistakes and so on in what you've written, and some people just don't bother. Many a time when I was working part time at work we would have to take down signs that had been written during the week and re-do them. What is a customer going to think if they walk into the store and we have signs up where we've failed to spell "jam" and "laminate" correctly?

It's not as if I'd boycott a shop where they've got incorrectly spelled signs, but it does reduce the trust that I have in them. It's by no means a particularly good analogy, but if Scan had a big sign up in store saying "Buy a new socket 1366 motherboard and get 20% off a Q9550", my confidence in them would be knocked a bit - it just makes you wonder how much effort they put into the rest of the business, and if everything they do is slapdash.

If I was reading CVs I would chuck out any with even a small error. For me, my CV is one of my most important documents (even if it doesn't have much in it ), and as such I would never let it go anywhere without me being absolutely satisfied with the flow, use of grammar, and punctuation - let alone the spelling and formatting. If somebody can't be bothered to check it themselves, can't be bothered to ask someone else, or is so deluded that they don't think they need any help, then why on earth would I want them to be working for me? I'll be sitting there for the next 10 years thinking "Nope, can't ask him to send out that report without proofreading it, I'll have to get someone else to do that."

As for the question about English standards declining, I disagree completely. My mother left her comprehensive school, one of the best in the area, at the age of 16, and had three boys in her class of 20-odd who couldn't read or write. I don't know of anybody at any school my age who couldn't at least achieve a semblance of reading and writing by the age of 9, even those with severe difficulties could manage a sentence or two.

I think there's just this obsession with computers and mobile phones ruining teenagers, and admittedly we now spend a lot of time reading and writing non-standard English, whether that's American spelling on websites, plain wrong spelling on websites, or txtspk wiv virtuly no vwls. However, with the advent of computers I would suggest that the average teenager is reading and writing far more than they ever were in the past. When my parents were young, they might have read the odd book, but they certainly didn't write letters or anything like that outside of school more than two or three times a year. Now we've got children reading forums, song lyrics, stories, playing games with all sorts of text, and then they're sending emails, writing comments on websites, visiting chatrooms and using social networking sites. Obviously there are all sorts of other implications there, but I think if anything, they're helping English skills.

Regarding the point about teachers' marking, I don't think that schools ignoring spelling and so on is always a bad thing - there was nothing more infuriating for me as a teenager than some braindead history teacher deciding that they were God's gift to English and commenting that they disagreed with my use of punctuation or grammar, when I was absolutely happy with what I'd written in the first place and saw no reason to alter it. Other people would get loads of red lines because they'd been writing quickly under timed conditions and they'd accidentally put two letters instead of one or something. There's always a time and a place.

[pp05]

I type fast and click post quick reply. The web waits for no man.

[TooNice]

Maybe, but there's well over a thousand symbols to remember, screw that.

Well, you are not going to get me to defend this system given that they've been the bane of my last 12 months. Yet some would argue that they do become easier to learn as you go along, and once you know enough, you can make some decent educated guesses when you encounter new vocab.

[aidanjt]

I guess if you grow up around the language it's easy enough, since you gain an 'intuitive' grasp of how the script is formed, and the meaning behind the symbols. Much the same with native English speakers and grammar. But it's just not going to work for non-natives, unless they spend a decade immersed in that language, imho.

[Kumagoro]

I don't know if someone has already mentioned this but, I can't stand when people say LOL in
actual speech not text. What the hell is that all about...

[Blastuk]

I don't know if someone has already mentioned this but, I can't stand when people say LOL in
actual speech not text. What the hell is that all about...

I do that all the time

Here's the funny words with different pronunciations:
Rough
Dough
Thought
Plough
Through
Borough
Slough
Cough
Hiccough?

what really bugs me is that there people who write misleading sentences that loose it's meaning because they don't know the difference between to and too


(Tongue firmly in cheek)

[aidanjt]

'Lose'?

[Blastuk]

'Lose'?

It's not funny if I have to explain the joke

[watforddude]

Will considering most teachers in your standard school are not english what do you expect.