This morning’s Inside Higher Ed reports that a British 
university lecturer has thrown in the towel on correcting student spelling. In an essay, he writes,“Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem, or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such.”I predict that the next thing to go is the "no drooling" rule.
12 comments:
Wut an offal devellopement. ;)
I'm with you, Roy!
I guess we need no standards at all. Harrumph!
It is a apaling tern of eventz, fer sher.
Harrumph, indeed! I say we never give in.
Amazingly, a tiny minority of students does seem to "get" the standards and meet them handily. Perhaps tinier each year--but it still exists, thankfully.
u all tuk my idea fer posting.
I culd get yoused to this.
Theft is the sincerest form of flattery.
I still think they're all a bunch of paunchy flap-mouthed lewdsters!
Draw thy tool, I say! My naked weapon is out.
[The Shakespearean Insulter]
During a campus planning meeting attended by our now EX-President, I brought up misspellings in a document. He told us that "peers don't criticize peers spelling". While faculty was suitably stunned (or anesthetized) only Torabora continued to suggest that it was a good idea that spelling be correct in a College document. The misspellings remained. We even have misspellings today in our accreditation response reports. It is pathetic.
Tora - What about punctuation, please?
Unless I see a bona fides on some kind of learning disability, my classroom rule is this: "If you haven't studied something well enough to spell it, you can't possibly have studied it well enough to understand it."
I then ask: If I handed out a multiple-choice exam peppered with the average number of student spellings, and assigned a textbook of that same quality, would I hear complaints? Even grievances?
Oh, yes.
English spelling rules -- when they exist -- are often bizarre, and silent letters abound (though we Irish are even more bizarre in that area). Maybe we should all go back to the academic roots of the European university and do everything in Latin! Now there's a language with some intelligible rules.
I meant student MIS-spellings. And by the way, it's UHpawkolips.
I had a student last year who hoped to become the
"Valid-Victorian"....I don't think he made it. Although he was a bit staright laced. I enjoy them.
Greg
Every semester, I lecture about "causal determinism," and every semester I warn students, "don't be saying or writing to me about casual determinism! That's WAY different than causal!"
It makes no difference. It doesn't matter how much I plead and warn and ridicule. On the final exam, half of 'em write about casual freakin' determinism.
Haha, I got graded once for being "absurdly minimalistic."
I was proud of that! Now I don't think I'm capable of being 'minimalistic' without feeling guilty. The next semester I took a logic class and I filled the first quiz back and front with tons of writing. She was okay with minimalistic "just answer the question" style. I didn't know that at the time.
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