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The butchering of the absolute basics of the English language - Have teachers stopped grading papers or is it an "everyone gets an A" scenario?
- Thread starter Grinchy
- Start date
LordRaptor
Member
Grinchy
Banned
Yuo cna porbalby raed tihs esaliy desptie teh msispeillgns. That doesn't mean everyone should write that way and it doesn't make it any less annoying.
manfestival
Member
I almost never see the could/should/would of issue. However I see a ton of their/they're/there and you're/your. Those drive me bonkers. It really is a simple concept and I never could wrap my head around the issues regarding those. Punctuation isn't my strong point but these are glaring issues.
Grinchy
Banned
I'm surprised. I see it everywhere and it's so hard for me to take a post seriously after I see it. It hurts my brain too much.
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coopermidnight
Member
Disclaimer: I can only speak for my own grade school experience.
For me, the English teachers were stuck in a shitty spot, especially in middle + high school. They spent far too much time teaching us how to make it through the writing portion(s) of a standardized test - FCAT in Florida - and it was out of necessity. Bad standardized test scores = bad news for the school. Thus, there was little else in English class other than vocab tests and reading and reviewing books and plays. To this point, I didn't learn how to use a semicolon until 12th grade. That wasn't even on the curriculum. Our teacher, bless her soul, noticed the glaring grammar deficiency in the class and made an on-the-spot decision to dedicate some time for helping us catch up.
I'm a programmer by trade, and it disgusts me to see how poorly my peers write in non-casual text outside of chat apps. Some of these guys are native speakers in their 20s and 30s, with a career based on precise, textual expression, and they still make the elementary your/there/its/etc. mistakes consistently. Aren't they supposed to be left-brained?
For me, the English teachers were stuck in a shitty spot, especially in middle + high school. They spent far too much time teaching us how to make it through the writing portion(s) of a standardized test - FCAT in Florida - and it was out of necessity. Bad standardized test scores = bad news for the school. Thus, there was little else in English class other than vocab tests and reading and reviewing books and plays. To this point, I didn't learn how to use a semicolon until 12th grade. That wasn't even on the curriculum. Our teacher, bless her soul, noticed the glaring grammar deficiency in the class and made an on-the-spot decision to dedicate some time for helping us catch up.
I'm a programmer by trade, and it disgusts me to see how poorly my peers write in non-casual text outside of chat apps. Some of these guys are native speakers in their 20s and 30s, with a career based on precise, textual expression, and they still make the elementary your/there/its/etc. mistakes consistently. Aren't they supposed to be left-brained?
I_D
Member
English teacher reporting in:
The most important thing to note is that, in my experience, nothing has really changed from how it's been since I was born. The only difference is now grammatically-poor people are able to be more vocal. They've always been there; you just didn't see them.
Secondly, the type of person who posts on forums and reads constant online discussions is not your average person. You are more likely to be linguistically-focused than your average person who spends all of his/her online time viewing videos and memes.
Another major player in the game is spelling/grammar-check. When a person grows up with software correcting mistakes, the lack of skill really shows itself when a less-effective correction algorithm comes into effect.
I have also spent a lot of time teaching 18-year-olds how to capitalize certain letters. When you consider that 50% (or more) of people are below your skill level, if you were a C-student or better, that really makes you realize just how many people out there are quite pathetic at something you find relatively easy (even though you might suck at something they find easy).
I've heard two separate thoughts on the issue: 'You must follow the rules, and breaking the rules is incorrect;' but also 'If I can understand you and the message gets across, then there's no such thing as right/wrong.'
And so I come to my thoughts: I like to separate spoken language from written, even though it makes the whole situation more complex.
With spoken language, it's very easy to understand people, even if the language is nowhere near correct regarding traditional grammar rules.
With written language, it's much more difficult. There is absolutely a point where too many mistakes can make the meaning get lost in translation. If a person doesn't adhere to specific, basic, rules, that person might as well be a moron - no matter how interesting the idea may be.
But the real issue is with reading-comprehension.
Ignoring certain rules isn't all that big of a concern with how things are written; the real concern is with how things are read.
Think about how many times you misread something, and had to re-read to gain clarification. Or even worse, how many times you've misread something, and took the entirely wrong meaning from it.
On tons of forums/message boards, and now even transcending into social media and the actual news, I see tons of situations where something was quite obviously misread (because it was a joke, trolling, serious, or simply missed a word), and it blows up into a huge issue; when the whole thing is a result of poor reading-comprehension.
[TL-DR] To summarize, I suppose: I don't mind mistakes in your average situation. In areas where language is important, though, you can't afford to make mistakes. Unfortunately, because so many people aren't in serious situations and therefore don't write carefully, even serious situations are now constantly misunderstood.
The most important thing to note is that, in my experience, nothing has really changed from how it's been since I was born. The only difference is now grammatically-poor people are able to be more vocal. They've always been there; you just didn't see them.
Secondly, the type of person who posts on forums and reads constant online discussions is not your average person. You are more likely to be linguistically-focused than your average person who spends all of his/her online time viewing videos and memes.
Another major player in the game is spelling/grammar-check. When a person grows up with software correcting mistakes, the lack of skill really shows itself when a less-effective correction algorithm comes into effect.
I have also spent a lot of time teaching 18-year-olds how to capitalize certain letters. When you consider that 50% (or more) of people are below your skill level, if you were a C-student or better, that really makes you realize just how many people out there are quite pathetic at something you find relatively easy (even though you might suck at something they find easy).
I've heard two separate thoughts on the issue: 'You must follow the rules, and breaking the rules is incorrect;' but also 'If I can understand you and the message gets across, then there's no such thing as right/wrong.'
And so I come to my thoughts: I like to separate spoken language from written, even though it makes the whole situation more complex.
With spoken language, it's very easy to understand people, even if the language is nowhere near correct regarding traditional grammar rules.
With written language, it's much more difficult. There is absolutely a point where too many mistakes can make the meaning get lost in translation. If a person doesn't adhere to specific, basic, rules, that person might as well be a moron - no matter how interesting the idea may be.
But the real issue is with reading-comprehension.
Ignoring certain rules isn't all that big of a concern with how things are written; the real concern is with how things are read.
Think about how many times you misread something, and had to re-read to gain clarification. Or even worse, how many times you've misread something, and took the entirely wrong meaning from it.
On tons of forums/message boards, and now even transcending into social media and the actual news, I see tons of situations where something was quite obviously misread (because it was a joke, trolling, serious, or simply missed a word), and it blows up into a huge issue; when the whole thing is a result of poor reading-comprehension.
[TL-DR] To summarize, I suppose: I don't mind mistakes in your average situation. In areas where language is important, though, you can't afford to make mistakes. Unfortunately, because so many people aren't in serious situations and therefore don't write carefully, even serious situations are now constantly misunderstood.
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manfestival
Member
Maybe I just have not paid as much attention.
Tapioca
Banned
They are easy to mix up because they sound exactly the same. I can tell you all the grammatical rules of when to use them but if I'm writing a forum post or Facebook message I occasionally use the wrong there or their. I never mess up they're because it has a y and a '. It also represents two words. It's a bit different. There and their is the same sounding word, with the same general letters being used.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
Well two is a freebie to remember because the weird looking one is for numbers.
Of the two that look like each other
The way to use Too can be remembered easily now thanks to filthy men and #metoo .
M
Macapala
Unconfirmed Member
The difference between "yea" and "yeah". I see the confusion between these two words all the time (especially on this forum).
coopermidnight
Member
I don't think confusion is the right word*. I'd wager almost anyone who says "yea" instead of "yeah" doesn't even know that the former is an actual word and is just chopping off a letter. "Yea" is getting to be archaic; in my lifetime I've never seen it used outside of the "yea or nay" context.
* Edit: in the context of this topic
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Cybrwzrd
Banned
I don't understand this though unless you aren't a native speaker.
I don't write based on how words sound, I write based on how I think, if that makes sense.
belteshazzar
Member
I do not think teachers have anything to do with it, perhaps to some small degree if you had a terrible teacher, but I don't think they have much of an influence at all (specially since proper written English is widely available in all sorts of literature) . This is a problem for all languages and for all people (it happens in Spanish too), so I think it's a combination of problems with the language itself and the individual's laziness/ lack of care/personality. However, I do believe it's a lot more widespread for English speakers, and I believe that has to do with the fact that a lot of words sound the same (or very close) even though they are spelled differently, such as your/your're (or spelled the same and sound completely different, but that's a different problem, learning English properly can be very challenging for non native people). To add insult to injury, these also happen to be super common words. In some instances, words do not even sound the same and people still make a mistake, and that is entirely that person's fault (then/than). English is not my first language, and making these kind of mistakes are a pet peeve of mine (regardless of language, it's a part of my personality), so I go out of my way to fix these mistakes. Even then, sometimes I end up making mistakes because they're phonetically identical and when I'm typing quickly I just write the sound, as opposed to the actual word. I think I do a good job of fixing them though, because I have taken the time to learn the correct spelling/grammar and because of my personality I go out of my way to fix them, as I mentioned earlier.
Leonard Washington
Banned
Have you seen the words they're adding to the dictionary these days?
Crunk (adj): Very excited or full of energy.
Droolworthy (adj): Extremely attractive or desirable.
Frankenfood : Genetically modified food.
Grrrl : A young woman regarded as independent and strong or aggressive, especially in her attitude to men or in her sexuality (A blend of “Grrrr” and “Girl.”)
Muggle : A person who is not conversant with a particular activity or skill.
Screenager : A person in their teens or twenties who has an aptitude for computers and the Internet.
Totes (adv): Totally.
Truthiness : the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.
Whatevs (ex, adv): Whatever.
Are they manually extracting the urine of the populace here or what? The formalization of slang equals the normalization of stupidity that paves the way to an idiocracy.
And you wonder why the average person is thick as shit and only half as useful.
Crunk (adj): Very excited or full of energy.
Droolworthy (adj): Extremely attractive or desirable.
Frankenfood : Genetically modified food.
Grrrl : A young woman regarded as independent and strong or aggressive, especially in her attitude to men or in her sexuality (A blend of “Grrrr” and “Girl.”)
Muggle : A person who is not conversant with a particular activity or skill.
Screenager : A person in their teens or twenties who has an aptitude for computers and the Internet.
Totes (adv): Totally.
Truthiness : the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.
Whatevs (ex, adv): Whatever.
Are they manually extracting the urine of the populace here or what? The formalization of slang equals the normalization of stupidity that paves the way to an idiocracy.
And you wonder why the average person is thick as shit and only half as useful.
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