Propper Englesh
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From: Rosemary on 13 Aug 2008 22:00 Jacq <jacqueline.smit(a)losttech.com> wrote: <snip> > According to the historical society, in the mid-1900�s there were 25 > million Americans; and in published form there were 100 million > McGuffey Readers.� With the ratio of four readers per person (not > counting the other literacy publishers: i.e., Little Blue Readers, > Winston Phonics Textbook, and publishers for individual school > districts), all Americans were bombarded with the tools for literacy > and the rate of literacy in the United States in the 1900 was a little > over 97%. From Wikipedia: "In the UK, according to the Daily Telegraph (14 June 2006) "one in six British adults lacks the literacy skills of an 11-year- old". The UK government's Department for Education reported in 2006 that 47 percent of school children left school at age 16 without having achieved a basic level in functional maths, and 42 percent fail to achieve a basic level of functional English. Every year 100,000 pupils leave school functionally illiterate in the UK." The CIA world Factbook reckons the literacy rate in both the UK and US is 99%, but they define it as just being able to read and write, no mention of how well. <snip> > The only universally effective method of teaching reading is through > the use of intensive phonics for a period ranging from several weeks > or months to about a school year, depending upon student age and > ability. For specifics about a wide range of research dealing with > whole language and phonics, see Preventing Reading Failure � Examining > the Myths of Reading Instruction. Once students have learned the > phonics skills that will serve them throughout their lives, don't > hesitate to have them practice their reading skills with mainstream > children's literature as possible to help them see how exciting and > meaningful reading can be. That's interesting. The UK school system seems to have an obsession with synthetic phonics, but I think I may be biased against it because I had to suffer through hours and hours of it when I'd already learnt to read. I think it's probably a good way to teach reading, and its effectiveness has been shown, but I wish teachers would learn to give each kid the right sort of work for their level, instead of the easy approach of making all the kids sit through work aimed at the 25th centile. Rosemary
From: Rosemary on 13 Aug 2008 22:07 "CJ Dunnaway" <cj_dunnaway-news(a)yaWHOhoo.com> wrote: <snip> > When I write about proper grammar I get paranoid about how I'm writing > it (commas are *very* difficult). :) :-D I think that's probably normal. > I'm of two minds on this subject. On the one hand, I think people > should learn to write properly, but that's just my personal > (prejudiced) opinion. On the other hand, I think language naturally > evolves over the course of time and we should learn to accept the > changes - otherwise, we'd still be speaking ancient Latin or > something. Yeah - I always feel uncomfortable in that way too. I think spelling and grammar has to be prescriptive to a certain extent though, if everybody is to understand what's been written. If it was all phonetic (like I assume it was back in the mists) you'd get problems with everyone having different pronunciations of words - "bath" might come out as barth, or bahth, or beth. It would take ages to read a piece of text because you'd have to work out every word. But being uncomfortable with being prescriptive about language used in professional or academic writing still doesn't stop me being put off when someone writes "Well, I should of, really...". > I'm just grateful we don't use symbols like the Chinese (except for > emoticons). :) Ouch. I've heard it takes years just to learn all the basic characters. Rosemary P.S. I think it'd be cool if we all spoke Latin. Don't know why, I just do.
From: Rosemary on 13 Aug 2008 22:21 Rowland McDonnell wrote: > Rosemary wrote: <snip> >> I don't think literacy in English-speaking countries is ever going to >> get that great. We have a pretty crappy system for transferring the >> spoken word to the page, compared with languages like Italian. It >> seems like there was better literacy in the past, but I bet that's >> only because the bottom 20% literacy-wise were doing jobs which >> required no reading or writing. > > My parents and grandparents all came from a society in which pretty > much everyone was literate, and I've never met anyone of those > generations who was as bad at writing as what appears to be the norm > amongst some people these days. Is there a possibility that you get more of a chance these days to see someone's standard of written English? People in previous generations would have been pretty ashamed if they couldn't write well, but now people use e-mail etc. no matter how bad their written English - nobody really cares that much. Also, there are a lot of people I've met who can write perfectly well if they want to, but for e-mails they tend not to bother, because it doesn't really matter that much. It's also possible that the older people you've met have tended to be from a different social class than he average younger person you've met, so have had different opportunities. I think you're probably right, though - I was really thinking a bit further back, I suppose, when not everyone could go to school, or if they could, they weren't very good ones. > The problem is not the language, but the fact that most English people > do not get a decent education any more. Scots and Irish (NI or the > other bit) have education that tends to be between `good' and > `superb', mostly due to the fact that the Westminster government has > decided that they should have more money for that sort of thing than > England gets (and the folk in Dublin do the right thing for their > people's education 'cos they're corrupt but not complete tossers.) Well, that's true, but I still think learning to spell would be much easier and people would get the hang of it better if we had a spelling system that makes more sense, like Italian. One of the big problems I've seen in the state schools I've been to is a lack of differentiation in the work that is set (the teacher jargon meaning of the word, not the mathsy meaning). <snip> >>Those lucky enough to get a decent education got a very very good >> education, and the others just got dumped on the why-bother pile. So >> the ones with little or no ability in reading and writing just never >> stood out at all and never got noticed, because they never needed to. > > None of my grandparents had education beyond the age of 14. All of > them had better handwriting than me[1], and they all used higher > quality written English than almost anything you can find in the > comments section of a Website. It's easy to change your handwriting, or it was for me. I had the worst handwriting in my class at school, except for a few kids who were dyslexic, or otherwise impaired when it came to writing - so I taught myself to write differently. <snip> Rosemary
From: Evil_Nigel on 14 Aug 2008 13:26 x-no-archive: yes On Aug 14, 6:03 pm, real-address-in-...(a)flur.bltigibbet (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > and they were lads who looked and behaved like semi-evolved > peanut brained thugs. One of that sort I'm thinking of only ever > communicated in grunts or with violent use of his fists and feet on the > occasions I saw him. I thought John Prescott grew up in Hull. > I'd not trust the CIA to get the time of day right. That depends on whose computer they read it from. > I have no skills in phonics and my reading and > writing beats that of modern kids hands down. I don't see that > `synthetic phonics' is going to help anyone in later life. I'm not convinced by phonics either. It may be better than no way at all, but I remain to be convinced it's the most effective way of teaching kids to read. > You know, the more I hear of him, the more I keep thinking that what we > need right now is Norman Tebbitt's exhumation and installation in 10 > Downing Street. He could hardly be worse than the current incumbent. Gordon Brown reminds me of the kid at school who tried to shove the square plastic peg through the round wooden hole. When he couldn't get it through, he'd bash the peg out of shape with a hammer until he could force it through. Most of his economic policy, if annotated as chess, would merit a '!' - speculative attempt to complicate. Evil Nigel
From: Rosemary on 14 Aug 2008 19:56
> Rosemary <mentally_subnormal(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >> I think spelling and >> grammar has to be prescriptive I just laughed when I read this again :-) Don't you just love it when a grammar nit-pick uses bad grammar in a sentence about bad grammar? Rosemary |