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

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

Ok.
In high school, I had one lesson on grammar. Ever.
That was in year 9.

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!!



Ok, rant off.

The other thing to note is that a lot of Australian slang came about as a verbal shortening of words; it would appear that with the internet, forums, and keyboard use, this is a way of developing a shorter language.
Also, it is reasonably informal, I bet that the same person would use different spellings in something more formal.



P.S. As a uni student who rides his bike, 1 lock works fine on a 30y.o. bike that breaks down more often than a landy!

* a text isn't just a book or play. Pictures count too!!

I'm on a few cycling forums and 4x4 forums. The general level of literacy on all of them is pretty woeful, but some of the school kids are completely unintelligible. They also have a habit of "post whoring", putting up hundreds of pointless comments and stretching threads on and on for no reason.

People get very touchy about it though. If you try to ask people to run spell check before posting, you risk a torrent of abuse and people assume that you bat for the other team

I blame Texting - you want to see some of the Resumes we get with txt language in them!!!

Aside from the last paragraph, where the poster used 'lost' for 'loss' and 'aight' for who-knows-what, it seems like most of it is txt style abbreviations.

I'd count that as informed breaking of the rules rather than a lack of literacy, which to me would count as literate to a greater extent than someone who can't create a grammatical sentence or spell correctly.

Cheers
Simon

I know what you mean PCH and it concerns me too. Some times it is not actually possible to understand what someone has written and that annoys me no end.

Xav

Originally Posted by Dave_S

. They also have a habit of "post whoring", putting up hundreds of pointless comments and stretching threads on and on for no reason.

Check out the "stars" thread here...

Presumably the school has taught him/her a level of English sufficient for him/her to spell words like:

reinforced
visually
regularly
loitering
investment

but apparently not:
literally

I don't think what the kid was taught at school has much to do with the trendy, lazy, inconsiderate way he/she has used the language in that post.