Thread: What level of English do our schools teach our youths?

It is seriously a shameful level, how often have you had to spell aloud the name of some vegetable so the cashier could do a price check?
My wife once had to tell a young woman that the vegetable she didn't recognize was a cabbage, then spell out "C A double B....
Australian metric exams maths sections were completed at 90%+ by a variety of 12 year olds in foreign countries as a test.
Japanese High School graduates did the same with 3rd year Maths degree papers at University level.
Will this initiate a discussion of salaries for teachers/lecturers?

Most of the problems stem from the home. Basic language skills should be taught and reinforced in the home environment, often they are not.

Having a retired teacher for a mother, an ESL teacher for a sister and a junior school teacher as a girlfriend, you won't find me supporting any arguments for performance rating teachers salaries or reducing them in any way.

There is no way on Gods Green Earth you would get me working as a teacher! They earn every cent they get.

Originally Posted by PCH

...Quoted below is a reply post from a Uni student :

"I ride ... ...bout 100 bucks on locks. I bought thick cable steel reinforced locks and i keep it at uni chained to the bike posts. There are 2 of em there.
I dun carry it around with me coz simply they are too heavy. (literately each one is like a 1kg each. they are visually strong AND structuring.)

If u commute regularly to work or school or uni keep ur locks there. Spend sum dosh on being safe , ie the locks rather then buying a new bike wen sum loser steals it.

Since ive started doing it about every second bike stand has sum1's lock on it. ..."

I can understand that the new generation do a lot of SMS texting and shorten words but this is certainly not a SMS message. I think we should be worried.
Chris

And this person matriculated to university? He is most likely to be an Arts Degree, English Literature major!

Do U spEk Nokia?

Diana

Originally Posted by thethink

Spelling and grammar don't seem to matter as much as exploring texts* in relation to their contexts and developing an understanding of the effects of context and questions of value. (brutalised from my NSW HSC English Syllabus)

In other words, you're going to write BS anyway, so who cares how you spell it!!

So it seems that you've learnt higher order thinking rather than being a clueless bum... thats what all of that meaningless BS is, but sometimes it's not realised that you are actually learning... just not what you think that you're learning. If you interpret your BOS syllabus using your higher order thinking you'll find that in there too. If you were writing BS you probably wont see it.

I doubt very much the English syllabus includes Nokia speak and perhaps it's use should be directed to somewhere else other than the schools.

Originally Posted by BMKal

You don't need to go as far as a cycling forum to see this. Try the Australian 4WD Action Forum.

True, but I don't think the lack of literacy skills there is necessarily age related.

another forum I'm on, text speak is banned....

"No SMS text in posts. We have members and lurkers who are sight-impaired and rely on screen readers to decipher posts. Please spell all words out in full and also check your posts for spelling errors. Near enough is good enough may be good enough for you, but those who rely on screen readers won't be able to make any sense of your messages at all."

which I think is fair enough.

and a lack of formal grammar in the NSW English High School syllabus is nothing new.
I remember being told by our Year 7 English teacher in 1977 that grammar was no longer part of the curriculum, however the entire English faculty strongly believed that we needed to be taught grammar and so were.

There's shocking spelling and grammar a lot closer to home than that forum.

Have you read some of the posts on here

Spelling and grammar seem to be one of those things.....you either can.....or you don't give a #&*t.