Re: Spelling and grammar

I suffer from the same problem, Mr M, and I too realise that most people would be offended to have their errors pointed out, so do my best 'not to notice'!

As for teachers who can't spell or grammaticise, yes, I have seen that many times. In fact, I distinctly remember an English 'expert' giving us a talk at our school. His Powerpoint presentation was littered with spelling mistakes, some of which were clearly as a result of his relying on an American spellchecker!

The rot set in, as far as I'm aware, during the 1960s. Anyone who went to primary school at that time or afterwards is likely to have suffered inferior teaching thanks to the idiotic 'child centred' ideas that began to be thought up round about that time.

Fortunately, my schooling just about preceded that era, although that of my siblings did not. My wife also had that misfortune.

I'm afraid that worse was about to happen, though. More recently, as I'm sure all teachers are aware, the government and their appointed 'experts' have been constantly trying to improve matters by making regular changes to the curriculum which have, of course, had the diametrically opposed effect to that intended! Children (and teachers!) benefit from consistency and not constant change.

Re: Spelling and grammar

Quite right too. Had that been me, I'd have returned the teacher's comments corrected in red ink.

Re: Spelling and grammar

Years ago, a school 'Report Card' came home relating to our then 10yo.

The report was riddled with errors.
Using a red biro, I corrected the errors, gave a mark of 7 out of 10 and returned the report with the notation "Must try harder".

Re: Spelling and grammar

Im sure i must make a lot of members happy with my posts.

Re: Spelling and grammar

Yes.

Re: Spelling and grammar

There was an article on the ABC web site today about this very matter. Quite interesting.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-0...-wrong/8157294

Written by Misty Adoniou Associate Professor in language, literacy and TESL at the University of Canberra.

It starts:

Do you remember being taught you should never start your sentences with "And" or "But"?

What if I told you that your teachers were wrong and there are lots of other so-called grammar rules that we've probably been getting wrong in our English classrooms for years?

Re: Spelling and grammar

That's true, we should never start a sentence with 'And' or 'But' although we see it all the time. I have started doing it too, only because I have seen it countless times in novels and not necessarily modern ones either.

Re: Spelling and grammar

For me rot set in when phonics took over it happened just as I started school, I could read and write prior to starting and an remember my nan being told off because I couldn't do phonics with the others because I could already spell !

Since then I've seen kids struggle from working through the phonics to learning to spell properly, if they had been taught properly to start with they only needed to learn once.

Re: Spelling and grammar

The same for my son Julie. i remember this strip of a thing having a go because we taught him to read using the old ABC method. I asked her how he was doing, she replied he was top of the class for reading, writing, and sums.The irony was lost on her.

Re: Spelling and grammar

Fortunately, all languages are fluid. They evolve.
The 'Rules' taught to us (often by rote or by cane) are not entirely relevant today.
We might not like it. Too bad.

"Our" English is not that of our grandparents.
(Read any letter or newspaper report from a century ago).

It might give us a warm, fuzzy glow to feel superior to our young in this matter.
But, "at the end of the day", change is inevitable.