TORONTO - Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can't write properly.
I had a 98% final mark in grade 13 English in an Ontario High School - when I wrote this exam after acceptance into Waterloo, I ended up with a 60% mark - just enough to be called 'proficient' in English. I called the exam into question then (a loooooong time ago) and I guess things haven't changed much.
The average Uni grad at our place can't spell for shit without a spell-checker. Even then they fail to spot things like 'break and enter' or the one that gave me a good laugh last week,' a member of the pubic'.
Really, the reports that I have to read are of a poor standard. Spelling, grammar and syntax errors are the norm. Those that stay at that level don't get promoted, nor do they deserve to.
I cann attest to this too. In the brief time I was teaching, I was just astounded by how poorly this upcoming generation can read and write. I don't think you can pin it just on Twitter and texting, but they sure as hell don't help.
And if I could have got away with it, I would have smashed every cell phone and iPod I saw.
i do think these websites are a problem , well more i see facebook being used by people my age when there in the library . i think it has become a major distraction for some but there is always going to be some webiste to distract people that age so its not really facebooks fault as much is people have short attention spans and into sites that always have soemthing new to look at like facebooks the newsfeed feature always has something new even though it may be news you don't care about . such as so and so are dating or so and so is going to such a party , it really isn't news just a distraction for some .
Typed assignments should be banned prior to at least Grade 7 (no spell check on a sheet of loose leaf as I recall), and cell phones should be banned from the classrooms completely.
There's absolutely no need for either, and the long term benefits would far surpass the temporary outcry from the lazy students and the whining, bitching parents during the transition back to the "old ways".
Really, the reports that I have to read are of a poor standard. Spelling, grammar and syntax errors are the norm. Those that stay at that level don't get promoted, nor do they deserve to.
And if I could have got away with it, I would have smashed every cell phone and iPod I saw.
now we just need to build a massive satellite to disable all spell checkers! Mwa haha.
I have no problem with reading things like "cuz" or "b4" in my texts. I do have a problem with reading it anywhere else.
o rly?
There's absolutely no need for either, and the long term benefits would far surpass the temporary outcry from the lazy students and the whining, bitching parents during the transition back to the "old ways".