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It it time to give up on grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.?

Minoosh

Penultimate Amazing
Minoosh
Joined
Jul 15, 2011
Messages
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I know it's bad form to complain to much about punctuation, spelling etc. on an Internet message board, but it seems to me there has been a drop-off lately on some pretty basic conventions on ISF. There are some comments I have to read twice to figure out what they are saying. Some of it is auto-correction gone amuck, as when a completely different word is substituted for the author's meaning, but some of it seems like sheer carelessness to me.

Here's the question. How much should I emphasize proper usage when I coach high school students on such conventions? Is it a lost cause? I've been calling kids out on it more, and some of them actually seem to like it - having some set of rules that they can learn. Plus, a lot of them have a fairly good grasp of the rules but don't bother applying them, perhaps a habit from texting. They seem to like "sentence repair" exercises because they really are sometimes relieved to be told there is one correct answer in this area.

Of course having said that, I'm sure I've made at least one error in this post.
 
calebprime said:
Who is this much you complain to?
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:D

But, I do feel for Minoosh in this quest.

Rules eh? It's fair to say that there are no absolute "rules", just guidelines, and even those are fluid.

"I has a cat" is wrong, unless you're kidding.

"That hinge squeaks, it needs oiled" is also wrong. Sort of wrong, in a technical sense, though we see it increasingly.

Where does 'technically wrong' end? Beat me.
 
Dispensing with "proper usage" in writing seems to be yet another example of "removing the obstacles from the obstacle course".

In assessing a piece of student writing it should be possible to allocate marks according to three separate criteria:
- Whether the student has an idea to communicate.
- Whether the student communicates that idea clearly.
- Whether the standard of spelling, punctuation and grammar meets an acceptable standard.

Students (especially boys) just want to know if they are right or wrong. Unfortunately, in the "no student left behind" quest, this has become a dirty concept and assessing as above has become a big "no no". Instead, they have to deal with vague gobbledygook that tells students and their parents nothing about how well the student is doing.
 
I made a typo in my thread title!

psionl0 said:
Dispensing with "proper usage" in writing seems to be yet another example of "removing the obstacles from the obstacle course".

In assessing a piece of student writing it should be possible to allocate marks according to three separate criteria:
- Whether the student has an idea to communicate.
- Whether the student communicates that idea clearly.
- Whether the standard of spelling, punctuation and grammar meets an acceptable standard.

Students (especially boys) just want to know if they are right or wrong. Unfortunately, in the "no student left behind" quest, this has become a dirty concept and assessing as above has become a big "no no". Instead, they have to deal with vague gobbledygook that tells students and their parents nothing about how well the student is doing.
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Do you have personal experience of gobbledygook that makes it hard to tell how a student is doing? Grading rubrics do tend to be hard to read, IMO, compared to the three-point list you mentioned. For example, a rubric to quantify reading comprehension might be above the student's (or parent's) reading level, which is not helpful. But I don't find a lot of difference between girls and boys in terms of wanting to know if they're right or wrong.

The idea of "No Child Left Behind" was to focus on using measurable data to evaluate progress, pinpoint problem areas and hold educators accountable, NOT to create a mandate to pass everybody. However I can confirm my own bias: I want all my students to pass and am probably an overgenerous grader.

I made a typo in my thread title :o. So my new standard is, one mistake is forgivable :cool:, but not three of them per sentence, which is common in Internet postings from adults who seem otherwise to be thoughtful and well-educated.
 
I would have said amok, but I can see that amuck seems to be accepted.

This is the beginning of the exam that high school students (Why isn't it hyphenated: high-school students?) take in Denmark. The students have to correct the sentences and explain the corrections. The errors are some of those typically made by Danes. The §§ are references to their English grammar book; they're not included in the actual exam.

Ret fejlene i følgende sætninger, og forklar dine rettelser på dansk. Brug relevant grammatisk/faglig terminologi. Der er kun én fejl i hver sætning. Skriv den korrekte sætning på linjerne nedenunder.
1. The ambassador’s children had spend most of their childhood abroad. §167
2. The vacuum cleaner broke down yesterday, but luckily the new will be delivered by mail in less than a week. §35
3. He narrowly avoided to run his car into a school bus full of children. §140
4. The famous winner of the literature prize, which latest novel was released last year, has died. §78b
5. The latest news about the terrorists are that they have given up negotiating for the time being. §12c
6. New car sales in Europe have falled to their lowest level since 1980. §167
7. The main character possesses strong morally values but ends up being isolated from her family. §27
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The 13th Tariff Act and the “free list” come to mind, so the legal community will always demand perfection in punctuation, but for social media type stuff it should be OK as long as the message gets through.
 
Minoosh said:
Do you have personal experience of gobbledygook that makes it hard to tell how a student is doing?
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Yes. I had the misfortune to be saddled with "Outcomes Based Education" 10-15 years ago when it was a fad among bureaucrats all across Australia. The basic idea was that instead of grading a student on what they achieved, they were assessed based on how high a level they were operating at. The problem was trying to get an objective measure of the level. Consider the following "descriptor":
English
Outcome 1: Listening and speaking
Students listen and speak with purpose, understanding and critical awareness in a wide range of contexts.

Aspect 2: Students develop a topic; show awareness of and respect for other people’s ideas or points of view; and modify elements of listening and speaking for different audiences and purposes.
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Imagine this gobbledygook multiplied by thousands of pages and you will know why no two teachers could agree on a level for a student (multiplied by the whole country!)

Minoosh said:
The idea of "No Child Left Behind" was to focus on using measurable data to evaluate progress, pinpoint problem areas and hold educators accountable, NOT to create a mandate to pass everybody.
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Unfortunately, by transferring the responsibility on student achievement from the students to the teachers it created pressure on teachers to give each student as high a level as possible - whether the student achieved it or not.

Worse, teachers were expected to use a large variety and number of assessment tools to assess student levels. This created a massive increase in the workload for teachers while diminishing greatly the amount of time teachers had to teach the subject.

It was a massive dumbing down of education.
 
The robots who replace us will all have perfect grammar, punctuation and spelling. Indeed, that is one of the ways to tell whether a member of the Robot Resistance League is human or not. Real humans make mistakes. If somebody asks you what 2+2 equals, say 5. Robots cannot do that.
 
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psionl0 said:
Yes. I had the misfortune to be saddled with "Outcomes Based Education" 10-15 years ago when it was a fad among bureaucrats all across Australia. The basic idea was that instead of grading a student on what they achieved, they were assessed based on how high a level they were operating at. The problem was trying to get an objective measure of the level. Consider the following "descriptor":

Imagine this gobbledygook multiplied by thousands of pages and you will know why no two teachers could agree on a level for a student (multiplied by the whole country!)


Unfortunately, by transferring the responsibility on student achievement from the students to the teachers it created pressure on teachers to give each student as high a level as possible - whether the student achieved it or not.

Worse, teachers were expected to use a large variety and number of assessment tools to assess student levels. This created a massive increase in the workload for teachers while diminishing greatly the amount of time teachers had to teach the subject.

It was a massive dumbing down of education.
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I found an example of your quote of your gobbledygook here https://www.bcgs.wa.edu.au/system/tdf/2017 Y12 Course Continuation Book.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=80 (pdf). I could find nothing specific about to what standard a student's performance is measured. Your quote was typical of what was written.

To me how important grammar and spelling is depends on how important the audience is to the writer. Something like this forum, as long as the meaning is reasonably clear then any errors should not attract comment. I think it is rude to point out minor errors in English here. On the other hand, in a job application, where communications skills are listed as critical, then time must be spent checking and rechecking for errors. This includes by other people.
 
dann said:
I would have said amok, but I can see that amuck seems to be accepted.

This is the beginning of the exam that high school students (Why isn't it hyphenated: high-school students?) take in Denmark. The students have to correct the sentences and explain the corrections. The errors are some of those typically made by Danes. The §§ are references to their English grammar book; they're not included in the actual exam.
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One factor that dismays me deeply about the U.S. culture/education system is that there is no real effort to build fluency in another language. I think this really affects the brain's ability to learn other languages later. Europeans may switch easily back and forth between three or four languages while many Americans will be stuck at a phrase-book level for their entire lives. Politically, mandating instruction in a second language would probably create a domestic backlash. The exception is that I know many bilingual teenagers who are immigrants or children of immigrants.

The failure to develop language-learning talent will IMO become a serious security threat to the U.S., hampering our ability to "keep an ear to the ground" and gather intelligence. We will become entirely too dependent on translators.
 
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psionl0 said:
Imagine this gobbledygook multiplied by thousands of pages and you will know why no two teachers could agree on a level for a student (multiplied by the whole country!)
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That gobbledygook sounds amazingly coherent compared to rubrics I've encountered in the U.S.
 
It's not just grammar, spelling and punctuation. The mispronunciation of many common words when speaking is what drives me crazy. Not just your average students and educated adults, but talking heads on television are the ones who make these mistakes the most. And they get paid to do it.
 
Brainster said:
The robots who replace us will all have perfect grammar, punctuation and spelling. Indeed, that is one of the ways to tell whether a member of the Robot Resistance League is human or not. Real humans make mistakes. If somebody asks you what 2+2 equals, say 5. Robots cannot do that.
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Artificial intelligence efforts make it a point of inserting humanlike processing into human/robot interactions - the pauses, "umms" etc. that pepper human speech. There was a thread about this recently.
 
bytewizard said:
It's not just grammar, spelling and punctuation. The mispronunciation of many common words when speaking is what drives me crazy. Not just your average students and educated adults, but talking heads on television are the ones who make these mistakes the most. And they get paid to do it.
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Gah. EYE-RAN drives me nuts. Could be we're just trolling Iran though.
 
Minoosh said:
There are some comments I have to read twice to figure out what they are saying.
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This is why it's important not to give up. The purpose of writing is to communicate. The rules of spelling and grammar exist in order to make that communication faster and easier. Ignoring them makes communication more difficult and slower.

Of course, that being said, the modern emoji-laden vernacular has its own grammar that can be grasped and understood as well. Language evolves, and the ways in which it evolves are not always simply "mistakes".

Minoosh said:
Of course having said that, I'm sure I've made at least one error in this post.
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Yes, I saw two, but those were attributable to basic American English vs English English usage. The first was in the spelling of "emphasize", which is purely American spelling conventions. From your point of view it is completely correct, so it isn't something I would normally pay attention to.

The other is the sentence fragment "...because they really are sometimes relieved to be told there is one correct answer in this area." I would have said "..to be told that there is one...". But again, this is usage. I think you could say "...to be told 'there is one correct answer'." or you could say "...to be told that there is one correct answer." If you are not quoting an actual statement, I think it is more correct to add "that" prior to the paraphrase of the statement.

Sorry, but I'm at home sick with a stomach bug today and I'm bored.
 
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