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Rant about writing skills

6K views 93 replies 28 participants last post by  NorthernMama 
#1 ·
I know that I have better writing skills than a lot of people. I have always been a fan of language. That may come from my childhood. My parents learned English as their second language. They took great pride in being able to speak correctly, despite their heavy European accent, and great pride in their children not being looked upon as "children of immigrants."

I also know that many people have difficulty with language. I know three dyslexics (four if you count Endiku :)). One is a teenager, one is 40 and one is 50. Not one of them can compose a proper letter without assistance. The 40 and 50 year olds can make it work. The teenager has decided he can't do it. He has basically built himself a mental wall and, IMO, will not improve at all until he is willing to exert some extreme effort and diligence. Too bad, because he's as smart as a whip. Then we see Endiku who has invested some serious time and effort into being able to communicate well. Granted that Endiku must be an over-achiever :-p as evidenced from how much she does for herself and the world around her, but nonetheless, it shows what determination can accomplish.

But, honest-to-purple-frogs, I am tired of posts that are multiple lines of run-on sentences. I have tried to read them. I have tried to understand them, but I just can't. So now I'm the one giving up.:-( How is that right?

More importantly, how do we help fix this? I surely don't know. I have tried working with the aforementioned teenager. We had real success but it was hours and hours of work over several months. That just isn't going to happen on an open forum.

Nyaaat. Rant over. I feel better now.
 
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#2 ·
We fix it by teaching our children to read and write. I don't know anything about Canadian schools, but the percentage of functional illiterates we graduate from high school in the US is appalling...
 
#3 ·
Faceman, it's the same up here. They have these new fandangled teaching methods that work for some kids, but don't work for all of them.

When I was in school, the methods were partly phonics and a great deal of repetition. No more repetition in school. No more writing drills, or spelling lists. While those things bored the heck out of me, every single kid went into high school being able to read and write. Not anymore. Seems to me, it's better to have 20% of the class bored and 90% succeed, than 20% succeed and 80% fail. Fail to learn that is; heaven forbid they should actually fail a grade! :shock:
 
#4 ·
"No child left behind" was absolutely the worst disservice we could do for our nation's kids. All we taught them was that they don't have to work hard or learn because they will have it handed to them no matter what. The schools don't want to risk losing their funding, so they will push them through anyway, whether they are learning or not. It is sad that these days it's easier to fail a grade by missing too many days than by getting poor grades.
 
#5 · (Edited)
My daughter started reading at a very young age. She did not want to be home schooled. So, until we could move to an area w a private school, the "deal" was that she could go to "day care" (aka, public school), if we sat down each day and reviewed her work as well as did a few lessons. How unfair to a child, but what else do you do???

I am here to tell you the public school system is at fault for poor writing skills, not to mention education, in general. My daughter would bring home papers w smiley faces, stars, "way to go" and "A's" on them that were more like "C" work. I would ask her WHY she didn't do it correctly (I knew she knew how to). Her answer? "b/c I don't have to [to get an 'A']". Out of the mouths of babes!! I would make her correct them. Pretty soon this type of thing became more infrequent b/c she didn't want to have to re-do her work to meet my standards, not the schools! The ONLY chance we stand is if parents take the bull by the horns b/c fighting the public school system is a losing battle.

She is now the valedictorian of her senior class, she is going to her first choice university in the fall...and she occasionally corrects my English (which leaves me w an odd feeling). :) And, she forgives me for all of those grueling after school lessons in her first few years of grade school.:D
 
#6 ·
I'm too scared to reply, in case I make a mistake:shock:

I try hard to have everything correct, but sometimes auto-correct takes over!
 
#7 ·
I sure know what you mean. In my case, I am certainly quite literate. But, I often don't bother to correct my typing errors, so I s'pose I might not come off that way. Pure and simple laziness.

I won't even give a post that is the Berlin Wall of solid text a second glance, unless it's required as my moderator work (argh!)
 
#8 · (Edited)
I know for myself, at least (and I'm 22 so not too far out of "teenager land"/public school), during high school it seemed like each english teacher I had had a different idea of what a run-on sentence was (for example. I still can't tell you what a noun/verb/etc would be used for. A semi-colon? What's that?!).
Some teachers said that run-ons were anything with more than 2 commas (lists not included), some said run-ons had more than one subject, others said "if you have to take a breath while speaking the sentence, that's a run-on." And these were Honors and IB (like AP) English teachers who should have known their stuff. Eventually I just gave up and started ignoring those parts of class because each time I would master one "technique," a new and different rule would come along and my previously mastered technique would be "wrong."

End result = I have no idea what a run-on actually is. I know I do it alllll the time and I can definitely pick a run-on out of a paragraph, but ask me how to fix it and I'll stare at you blankly. Sure, I suppose most run-ons could be broken into short little statement-type sentences but that would make for some seriously boring posts.
I do try to combat my horror-grammar by using my "enter"-key liberally and breaking up each post, to hopefully lend space for understanding, but yeah.


I'm sorry. :oops:
haha
 
#10 · (Edited)
I am two hard semesters away from my bachelor's degree in English lit or three hard semesters away from my teaching cert as a high school English teacher. However, I have second-guessed my decision to be a high school English teacher. Why, you ask? Let me explain.

When I was in high school, our teachers expected us to have a basic understanding of the English language and its rules. They were not there to teach us the basic grammar and spelling skills we were expected to have mastered by the fourth grade, they were there to teach us about literature and help us learn to write pre college-level papers. Because I have always been good with words, many of my classmates came to me to help them proof-read their papers. I also helped my mom grade papers from her fourth graders.

Fast forward to a few years ago as I was helping my niece (then a sophomore in high school) edit a paper for her English class. My niece is a very smart girl. Imagine my confusion when it seemed as though a third grader had written this supposedly high school level paper. There were grammatical atrocities, spelling errors, and she used text speak, even! :shock: I asked her, not unkindly, why it was that there were so many errors in her paper. She replied that she had never really learned about grammar from any of her teachers and didn't understand why using text speak was wrong.

Thus began my quest to find out where the disconnect was between what was supposedly taught in grade school and what was being used in high school. I found apathetic teachers whose hands were being proverbially tied by the system. I found students who had no accountability for their lack of interest or inability to process and use what was being taught. Finally, I spoke to my high school band director (who is now a high school vice principal, but who was, at the time, a history teacher). He shared my disgust with what the education system had come to. He also let me in on the secret that it has become the parents who have taken a lot of the joy out of teaching (not all parents, of course, but the ones who feel that their Johnny is entitled to an A because he's "speshul" and shouldn't have to do the work required because it was too "hard").

That was when I decided that I didn't want to be a teacher anymore. I wanted to be a teacher to share my love of literature and the nuances of the English language with my students. Not to teach them basic grammar that they should have learned in elementary school.

I'm right there with you on having trouble reading posts with run-on sentences and the like. I have found myself many times having to hold my inner "grammar nazi" in check. Heck, I'm so bad that I have been known to point out grammatical errors in already published works by well-known (and some not-so-well-known) authors. Maybe I should become an editor...
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#17 ·
I am two hard semesters away from my bachelor's degree in English lit or three hard semesters away from my teaching cert as a high school English teacher. However, I have second-guessed my decision to be a high school English teacher. Why, you ask? Let me explain.

When I was in high school, our teachers expected us to have a basic understanding of the English language and its rules. They were not there to teach us the basic grammar and spelling skills we were expected to have mastered by the fourth grade, they were there to teach us about literature and help us learn to write pre college-level papers. Because I have always been good with words, many of my classmates came to me to help them proof-read their papers. I also helped my mom grade papers from her fourth graders.

Fast forward to a few years ago as I was helping my niece (then a sophomore in high school) edit a paper for her English class. My niece is a very smart girl. Imagine my confusion when it seemed as though a third grader had written this supposedly high school level paper. There were grammatical atrocities, spelling errors, and she used text speak, even! :shock: I asked her, not unkindly, why it was that there were so many errors in her paper. She replied that she had never really learned about grammar from any of her teachers and didn't understand why using text speak was wrong.

Thus began my quest to find out where the disconnect was between what was supposedly taught in grade school and what was being used in high school. I found apathetic teachers whose hands were being proverbially tied by the system. I found students who had no accountability for their lack of interest or inability to process and use what was being taught. Finally, I spoke to my high school band director (who is now a high school vice principal, but who was, at the time, a history teacher). He shared my disgust with what the education system had come to. He also let me in on the secret that it has become the parents who have taken a lot of the joy out of teaching (not all parents, of course, but the ones who feel that their Johnny is entitled to an A because he's "speshul" and shouldn't have to do the work required because it was too "hard").

That was when I decided that I didn't want to be a teacher anymore. I wanted to be a teacher to share my love of literature and the nuances of the English language with my students. Not to teach them basic grammar that they should have learned in elementary school.

I'm right there with you on having trouble reading posts with run-on sentences and the like. I have found myself many times having to hold my inner "grammar nazi" in check. Heck, I'm so bad that I have been known to point out grammatical errors in already published works by well-known (and some not-so-well-known) authors. Maybe I should become an editor...
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What I've discovered is pretty much every English teacher assumes their students had already been taught the basics by previous teachers. Unfortunately that ends up leaving a whole lot of wholes in education. Toss in teachers that think using cuss words, l33t speak, text spelling and such and we have a lot of kids that are going to struggle in the real world.

For myself, I know when I read a properly written sentence but don't ask me why, how to map that sentence or to write one myself. I use the left side of my brain not the right. I would rather sit down and do some calculus then try to explain the difference between a verb and noun.
 
#11 ·
I think the worst thing that has been quite common in novels (hands are shaking, am I going to make an error?) is speech without speech marks! What is with that?
 
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#13 ·
I know, right?!

The only thing that I really get tripped up over (I'm an aspiring novelist) is writing out a character's thoughts. I had two college professors who were instructors for my Independent Writing: Fiction professors. They both gave me different rules on writing out a character's thoughts. One said use italics to denote the thought, the other said not to. To this day, I have seen it done both ways, so I've come to the conclusion that it is a personal preference.

Tiny, I've noticed the excessive commas in posts written by some of our UK members on here. Not all of them, but quite a few of them.
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#12 ·
I really do feel as if our schools fail students and don't prepare them for life. My first year of Uni was hell. I actually had to study and manage a schedule and couldn't just skip classes, skim the textbook and ace exams. I however have yet to graduate a school without distinction. Uni really taught me how to write, not the BS English classes in high school. I really had to succeed in writing, even though my weakest thing is English and writing. And now that I'm doing a thesis I'm glad I know how to write well and that its easy.130 pages will be a piece of cake!
When I was a kid, my mother didn't trust the school system to teach me to read, and she taught me herself with phonics games and things. I was an above average reader for my first years of school and even now am able to understand new words (when I find them lol) better than many of my peers. However because I don't have a language brain, learning a second language is actually reeeeally hard :( good thing its German so at least is phonetic!

But yes, overall I agree that public education is a wash. Being a smart kid, I didn't have to put effort in to get As. So I struggled with time management and scheduling. And without a few Uni degrees, I'd probably still be there. But then I know kids who struggled with the material in high school. It's not fair to anyone to have these kids in the same classroom. I went to school when we still got segregated into above average, average, and below average abilities. And still I don't think that recognized the needs of the kids enough. I certainly did not get what I should have out of public education. I wish I had been pushed at a Uni level and finished HS in under 2 years. But that was never an option. Same with kids who struggled, in 30 person classes? Really? How is that helping them learn?
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#14 ·
Being a smart kid, I didn't have to put effort in to get As. So I struggled with time management and scheduling.]
This!! I suck at time management and scheduling! I was one of those kids that could sit down the morning a paper was due, write the whole thing, and get a high B or a low A. In my world history class in college, we had a paper due every Wednesday. It was a short two to three page paper on a question our professor gave us. I would literally sit down on the Wednesday the paper was due after my 9am sociology class and write my paper to turn in for my 1pm world history class. I never got lower than a 95% on any of my papers that I wrote this way.
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#15 ·
Well, Drafts, if you could find it in your heart and spirit to become a high school English teacher, you might be able to change , in some small way, this terrible trend. I think many of us can recall some teacher in our past, whose committment to the vocation made a difference in our lives. Could you not be one of them?
 
#16 · (Edited)
Don't think it isn't something I've gone back and forth on with myself for the last three years (since I dropped out of college). I actually have a list of pros and cons on my laptop. It's something I need to look at again, especially now that I have someone in my life and we want to start a future together.

My band director that I mentioned in my original post once told me that I should be a teacher. He said "Paige, it doesn't matter what you teach; you just need to teach."
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#18 ·
Another huge issue is the classes themselves. It has been shown time and again that different kids learn different ways. Instead of putting them in a class designed to teach the way they learn best, they are lumped together and expected to learn it no matter how it is taught (or NOT learn it, as the case may be). If they assigned them to classes based on their learning strengths, some parent would yell discrimination instead of realizing it might actually help their child learn better. Instead of everyone working together, it has become the government threatens the schools, the teachers and parents are at odds, and the kids slip through the cracks.

I have a BA in English with a minor in Creative Writing and had considered teaching as well, but I would have only agreed to teach at a small private school where politics weren't a factor and the kids could truly be helped. I hated the public school system. I went to private school for a year and a half, and learned more there than I did the entire seven years prior. When I went back into the public system for high school, it was a joke. I was so far ahead that I just coasted through. College was a wake-up call for sure.

I use the forum to practice my english skills, not to forget about them. I was darn proud of that degree, even though I have never really used it. (Even more-so since I crammed all 4 years of English classes into two and a half. I started out as a Biology major and HATED it, so I switched to English the middle of my sophomore year.) The horses don't really care about proper grammar, lol. But like anything else, if you don't use it, you WILL lose it.
 
#19 ·
All this talk about how our education systems get a failing grade in English is right on the mark. However, that doesn't help us with the people that were and are put through the current system without writing skills. We all know that we should, could and can help those immediately around us when they are young. But what about the young adults that have their GED but can't compose a grammatically correct sentence? What do we do to help them?

Can we do anything, right here on the forum? Do they want to improve their writing skills?
 
#20 ·
I think at that point, they have to WANT to help themselves. Most of the ones that have made it that far without those skills see no reason to try and get them now. As we've seen in other grammar threads here on hofo, most of those that need help most don't care enough to get help, or are too defensive to even entertain the idea. There is always some excuse why they shouldn't try.
 
#22 ·
I totally agree that the school system is failing in their job to teach the next generation how to function in society. Knowing the language and how to comunicate effectively is important. Parents need to make sure their children are ready to move into their next roles as the school system wasn't meant to take their place. My parents checked my work every night and made sure I knew my lessons.
 
#23 ·
^Posted before I was done-bad computer! My other thought is that you would make an awesome teacher Paige. As another posted though-maybe a private school where the kids are motivated. I can't read a book that is poorly written, but when one just flows, I am sorry to finish it.
 
#25 ·
That is one of the perks of living in Arizona. We had an abundance of charter schools (similar to private schools, but they are free to attend). I would definitely want to teach at a charter or private school. I never attended either, but I was a motivated student that loves to learn, so I learned a lot on my own. My mom told me a few years ago that if charter schools had been around when I was in school, she would have sent me to one.

My son attends a charter school. He's nine-years-old and a third-grader. He is in advanced math, advanced science and advanced English. When my brother and his boys came to visit from Georgia, they have one boy who is a year older than my son and one who is a year younger. I was honestly impressed with how much more advanced my son was than either of his cousins.

My niece (the one I mentioned before...I only have one) told me once that she would have LOVED it if I had been her English teacher. When I asked why, she said "Because I would have actually learned something in high school!"

Foxhunter, I know exactly what you mean about not being able to teach kids who don't want to learn. The sad part is, it isn't entirely the kids' faults. Their parents may have hated school, so they refuse (often subconsciously) to instill a love of learning in their children. Or even worse, they just don't care or want to take the time to care.
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#24 ·
Genrally me spellin is OK. me grammer sometimes is not so good. I were tawt rite in skool and me english teacher would be turnin in er grave if she were to reed some of the fings people rite.

I am a teacher of riding, I long ago learnt that you cannot teach anyone anything unless they want to learn.

Some years ago I attended a primary school on an open day. One young lad, eight or nine years, was busy drawing a dinosaur. I asked him if it was a Brontosaurus and was immediately told it was a Stegosaurus and told the difference in the two (He spelt them correctly too) yet his teacher told me that he was backward and hard to teach.

I agree with the poor standards and here in the UK, many universities are complaining that new entrants are way below standard. Not just in English either.
Exams have been dumbed down to get high passes. This is not to say that the entrants are not working hard but that they are being taught so that the school passes the governments stats not so they get a good wide education.

Personally I disliked school. I found it boring most of the time. There were 38 of us in a class and although in the top stream, I found that many lessons were repeated over and over. Good teachers encouraged those that had grasped the lesson to go on to the next and set those that hadn't extra work until they did.

A teacher plays a big part in a child's life and can not only influence their learning but also their future life. Now, with many families not believing in discipline, the teacher has more problems to deal with especially in primary school.

My niece is just starting on teaching English. She wasn't sure if she wanted to teach primary of high and chose the latter because of the lack of discipline with many of the younger children. One mother, when told that her child had been punished for swinging on the curtains, said "I told the little bleeder that he wasn't to do that in school, he can do it at home."
What hope is there with this sort of attitude?

This mentioned niece disliked English as a subject until she had a new young teacher when al changed and she learnt to love it. At a parents evening my sister was attending with her younger daughter, this teacher was pointed out to my sister.
Sister then went up to the young woman and introduced herself saying that she had not an appointment with her but just wanted to thank her for all she had done helping to change E's attitude to English.

e was not pleased at her mother having spoken to the teacher but next day at the end of a lesson the teacher called E behind and said that she had been having a very bad time with parents either not turning up for their appointment or, moaning about how she was pushing them to hard. She said that she was seriously thinking about packing it in but then sis walked in and thanked her and that made it worthwhile.

The fact that on TV and the radio there are a lot of badly speaking presenters. Regional accents I can take but, bad grammar grates hard.

Not sure what can be done. Teachers have to learn that if a child does not learn when taught a certain way, to explain it in another.
Long gone are the days when any subject was corrected with a red pen for grammar and spelling - that is now considered to be incorrect and makes the child depressed.

Discipline needs to return and if a child is turned over to a school then it should be left to them to implement the rules without parents complaining.

Until teaching is left to the teachers without interference of the governments laying down the rules then things will not change.
 
#27 ·
Some places teach phonetic spelling. They actually encourage students to use it! I had a friend who asked me to proof read his paper - he was in the same community college I was at. I could not understand his writing until I read it out loud - then I understood it! He couldn't spell at all and spelled by sound.

I think we should go back to when they would fail and even hold back a student who wasn't making it. All this new stuff where everyone's a special unique snowflake and is a winner is ruining people.
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#28 ·
Did you know that in public schools, teachers are no longer allowed to grade/mark papers and assignments with red pen? It's because some parents complained that the red pen was demeaning to their kids. *facepalm*
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#30 ·
My Mother is a retired court reporter who transcribed court cases at home. I remember sitting at her feet listening to "Did you beat the women to death?" (She verbally said quote, unquote) "uh-huh" spelling out u h dash h u h.
I fret over comma placement constantly. I took several journalism classes and had planned on making that a career. Journalistic punctuation placement is different than normal. A list is e.g.; tobacco, firearms and drugs. The correct is; tobacco, firearms, and drugs. If you see me dropping a comma, that's why.
As for blame on today's lax grammar, it's a full house. The school systems with its lack of funds, parents who have to work too many hours, or dependence on electronics by the young. I don't think we can say yes, that's what the problem is.
ETA- My first typing teacher would be aghast at not placing 5 spaces before starting a new paragraph. Not goin there :lol:
 
#32 ·
I was never very good in English classes in high school. I didn't care what nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs were or used for. I knew I wasn't going to be a writer or editor or such. History wasn't a good subject either. I usually only got C's in them, with a couple D's.

My brain was wired for math and science. I could ace those classes without studying. My senior year I was taking college algebra but I needed to have geometry done first. They allowed me to take both at the same time because I did well so far. I hardly ever took any notes in class, didn't study but I got A's.

Even with my dislike and poor grades, I feel that I do pretty well. When I see posts that are run-on and have poor punctuation, I get irritated too. Is it really THAT difficult to even try?

Run-ons and lack of punctuation are one thing. Spelling is another issue. Granted, there are people from other countries and English isn't their first language. However, to those that it is their first language, most computers and cellphones have spell checker or autocorrect.

Ok, my rant over 😳
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#34 ·
English is not an easy subject to learn, so many difficult spellings and sounds (especially if spelled correctly not the US way!) :lol:

There has been much change in the meaning of words.
I use to compete on a horse called Gay Boy. I thought that was a lovely name - which it was in the original meaning of gay.

I caused quite a lot of consternation and curiosity when in the US and asked a butcher for a joint (roast) and remarked when in a restaurant, "I'm going out for a ***!" (Cigarette)

I try to not correct youngsters I am around all the time. It can alienate them but it does grate when you keep getting "I were going." or "We was going."

Grammar does matter. I would always employ someone who spoke correctly over someone who didn't as long as both were capable.

I do not know if any of you watch Super Nanny but Jo Frost, brilliant with not only children but people too, would not be employed by me because of her bad grammar. (Not that she would ever want a fixed job.)
 
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