Apostrophe Abuse

Olly, you have no idea how large a hole your arrogance has allowed you to dig. Remember, most people you meet on the internet will only tell you what they choose; and will only respond when, and if, they choose.

*deleted section*

This article will explain the Initial Teaching Alphabet, in layman’s terms. Unfortunately it is not from the Daily Mail website.

The guidelines for the National Curriculum are available online, as is information about KS4 and level 8+.

14-19 learning index http://www.qca.org.uk/14-19/qualifications/index.htm

Curriculum online http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk/Default.htm

KS4 http://www.nc.uk.net/webdav/servlet/XRM?Page/@id=6016

KS3 http://www.qca.org.uk/283.html

Foundation stage http://www.qca.org.uk/223.html

Qualifications http://www.qca.org.uk/15.html

GCSE, GCE, VCE, GNVQ and AEA code of practice 2005/6 http://www.qca.org.uk/592_13267.html

Article about teacher training http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4733768.stm

Current teacher training options
http://www.tda.gov.uk/Recruit/thetrainingprocess/typesofcourse.aspx

Oh bugger, I have been ensnared by your devious wiles.

So you have a degree? Gosh. I have three. And a PGCE, which some of my teaching colleagues count as a degree as well, at least when it comes to mortgage applications.

Still, I'm not quite sure how your career alters the fact that you've written off an entire generation. Oh no, wait, you've mentioned a whole list of reforms to the A level system that have nothing to do with anything being discussed, just to show how up to date you are. I've taught AS and A2 and my General Studies lessons were a joy to behold, despite the ubiquity of Key Skills folders.

But never fear, for a list of weblinks will always make you look knowledgeable. I see nothing there that suggests it's possible to become a teacher without a stint in a higher education institution, as I stated yesterday, and I see nothing in the KS4 info (KS4 broadly covers the GCSE years, if anyone else is still reading this) to suggest that grammar, spelling or punctuation are being ignored. In fact there seems to be a constant stressing of the use of standard english and the need for accuracy.

My arrogance digs many holes, but to be honest, I'm not too sure this is one of them. I just see an internet forum on which I post under an assumed name, where an old woman is having a pop at an entire generation of young people and their poor education. And that angers me.

I am still glad I left teaching, but never more so than when I realise what I could have turned into if I carried on with it.

Does the misuse of apostrophes annoys you? Discuss.

Man this thread is great.

Nope don't actually give a monkeys about apostrophe abuse and think there are more important issues in the world as a whole.

Thingywhatsit wrote:

...and think there are more important issues in the world as a whole.

Indeed, but the review writers world is a small world with small worries.

Come on guys - let's cut out the unncessary personal jousting (or I might just join in!) and stick to the discussion which IS progressing well.

Is it a symptom of declining standards that "Key Skills" are being introduced at VI form level and that Unis are reintroducing formal admissions assessments? Surely "Key Skills" should be taught during the compulsory school years and not at optional VI form level. Are we to assume that only those who do A levels are literate?

Where current language and grammar use crosses the line between etymological evolution and just "can't/won't do" I don't know.

I for one do not get all this key skills business. I have an A-Level in English Lit. but still had to do a key skills level 2 in English as part of my NVQ. Surely if someone is undertaking an academic course a basic standard of English should be presumed?

I found this:

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference at Exeter University, September 2002 wrote:

New regulations for the assessment of quality of written communication in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) will be introduced in 2003. This paper reports on the performance of the previous style of assessment for quality of written communication, that of the spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG) mark.

Between 1992 and 2002, 5% of the total marks in many GCSE subjects has been allocated to SPaG.

SPaG assessments typically fail to achieve their 5% expected weight and their effect on grade is not large.

(The full paper can be found here)

That's where I got the 5% figure (as of 2002, anyway).

I was in high school in the 80s (I finished high school in 1985), and whilst the standards were in definite decline then, I would not have achieved a high mark on an English (or for that matter, History or any other subject) if the grammar or spelling was pants.

In fact, when I was in 10th grade (around 16), I lost marks (and lots of marks) on a 'social studies' essay about Senator Macarthy, because I spelled candidate wrongly. I spelled it canidate. I did so 17 times, and lost marks each time. I've never forgotten how to spell it.[/url]

dididave wrote:

I for one do not get all this key skills business. I have an A-Level in English Lit. but still had to do a key skills level 2 in English as part of my NVQ. Surely if someone is undertaking an academic course a basic standard of English should be presumed?

That may, possibly have something to do with funding, perverse though that sounds. My mother did some adult education classes recently, one in IT and one on digital photography. She was required to undertake a basic literacy test as part of the courses. When she questioned this (my mother is not what you would call illiterate, despite only having a handful of O levels) she was told that unless the test was taken, funding would be withheld. I appreciate that there are people who return to study as adults lacking in the basic skills, but for this lack of skill to be presumed is, to me, symptomatic of a failing system.

I was told something a little similar. At the college I attended they had to tag on extras to warrant the courses. Bizarre really as the registration form asks whether you "need assistance with literacy or numeracy". Seems to be a lot of paperwork for the sake of funding. On another course I had to do a IQ test to decide whether I needed to the key skills. Nice for me as I did not but demoralising for those who did!

mattygroves wrote:

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference at Exeter University, September 2002 wrote:

New regulations for the assessment of quality of written communication in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) will be introduced in 2003. This paper reports on the performance of the previous style of assessment for quality of written communication, that of the spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG) mark.

Between 1992 and 2002, 5% of the total marks in many GCSE subjects has been allocated to SPaG.

SPaG assessments typically fail to achieve their 5% expected weight and their effect on grade is not large.

I like the acronym - pasta springs to mind.

Seriously though, a question for the teachers. When does an error fall into the SPaG category and when is it an incorrect answer. There must be numerous examples of answers which, through poor spelling, punctuation and grammar, become incomprehensible. Does someone lacking in basic skills comprehend a double negative for example? If not, how is their answer of "it didn't not go" treated when the correct answer is that "it went"?

It comes down slightly to individual discretion, but my attitude was that if I couldn't understand an answer, it was wrong. My marking of written pieces was already complicated by the fact they were in French though, so although I was working to the same broad guidelines, there were a few extra subject-specific factors we had to take into account.

Regrettably, Spartacus52 is probably your best bet for this question

Ah, language exams. That's another area where it becomes hard to understand the lack of attention to English SPaG (maybe that acronym is growing on me).

When I studied languges, ancient or modern, the answer was incorrect if it was incorrectly spelt, if I used the wrong gender or if I ignored the basic rules of grammar (e.g. in German, the verb coming second). Why is this not the case in English exams?

Seeing the difference in Education in the UK and here in France, it amazes me how much emphasis is spent on the correctness of grammar in French Language here in France. There are so many hours of schoolwork spent on it and they really are strict. I think learning the grammatical rules of a language are so important and feel sometimes when reading reviews that English is changing, though not necessarily for the better.

I think again, it comes down to situation.

When I write on here, or when I write an email to a friend, I might, for the sake of brevity and informality, use 'cuz' instead of 'because'. However, I'd never do that on a job application or university essay. For that matter, unless I were specifically trying to be tongue in cheek, I probably wouldn't use it on a review, either (though I might). However, I'd never (unless it were a typo) use small i for I, or neglect capital letters and punctuation (again, unless it were a typo or similar) even in an email. It just makes things so much harder to read.

I think there are two issues from the educational point of view (and also from the 'youth of today' argument).

1) People just don't know the rules of SPaG. They don't know how to do it, because nobody has ever told them. In particular, schools have not enforced SPaG (by, for example, downgrading poorly spelled essays), and so these people do not know that such errors make a piece of prose more difficult to read.

2) Today's email and SMS culture encourages abbreviations, informality and shortcuts, so habits that start out developing when communicating informally amongst friends spill over into other parts of life.

I've read some shocking CVs and proposals at work (everywhere I've worked) - I think that's partly because people have just become used to having poor work accepted.

Now I'm not saying that every communcation should be deathly formal and stiff. I'm not saying that 'cuz' and 'pls' and 'u' should be avoided in all written communications, necessarily. I'm just saying that people should be able to write 'properly' if appropriate. And I think there are many people who do lack the skills to distinguish.

Discuss

I don't think that that just applies to writing either Matty. It applies to manners as well. I think that learning manners is essential and here I would say that in a family I know here, their children were taught etiquette so that they know how to behave in given circumstances. Having learnt it, they are not forced to adhere to it in their own homes, but are actually given the opportunity not to make a fool of themselves when faced with a situation where it becomes important.

It's the same to me as with writing. If people want to be writers on an internet site, then part of the skill of writing is being able to produce work that is clear for the consumer to read, so they would be expected to write it in English whilst still being able to text their mates using abreviations. The problem I see more and more is that youngsters cannot tell the difference and that is worrying.

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Quote :

The French are very keen to retain their national heritage. They go to greath lengths to avoid speaking English and to ensure that French people do indeed speak French and speak it correctly. In recent years they have even gone to great lengths to introduce new words that are the equivalent of the English words that have had to be invented around the increasing use of hi-tech and the internet.

Actually from living here, I would say that they like to invent their own technological words and that most of the new ones are Masculine, as this is a very sexist society which shows through in their language. We have huge jokes about it sometimes, and no one can explain the logic of it to me as being anything other than that of a male. As for words like "weekend", "picnic" etc., they actually tried to ban these words as they felt it was changing the language.

kelr101 wrote:

Well if you're anal then so am I!

Punctuation is a bug bear on sites such as Ciao and Dooyoo, and yes even in publications...but what can we do?

I find it very frustrating that my children will all in likelihood grow up and be able to speak in "text speak" rather than using proper English.

I agree here with kelr101. Whilst it may well benefit many who use apostrophes properly, there are many people who don't have a general grasp of English never mind proper punctuation, grammar and good grounding in spelling which may annoy older generations of people.

Whilst I would like to blame half of the generation for this thanks to text messaging on mobile phones, a lot of worded "texts" on the internet, reviews from review companies and generally typed information on the internet seems to be absent of proper correctness in writing, punctuation and spelling. Sometimes some of these worded texts have been translated from other sites which often shows poor punctuation and grammar.

And they say to read is the best way of learning...

This 5% thing that seems to be causing so much confusion... I dunno about secondary school and KS3, but I do know about primary school and KS2.

The KS2 literacy tests have four papers - comprehension, spelling, short descriptive writing test, long creative writing test. The exact marks available go up and down by one or two percent from year to year, but roughly it's like this:

Comprehension 50%
Spelling 7%
Long Writing Test (Spag) 8%
Long Writing Test (text structure and organisation) 12%
Long Writing Test (creativity, ideas) 8%
Long Writing Test (handwriting) 3%
Short Writing Test (Spag) 4%
Short Writing Test (text structure and organisation) 8%

So in the KS2 tests, a total of 22% of marks are awarded for being able to write legibly, spell correctly and use punctuation and grammar correctly. A further 20% of marks are devoted to the structure of a pupil's writing - correct use of paragraphing, connective words, logical idea development. A further 50% of marks are awarded to pupils for actually understanding what they read.

Despite this whole Spag thing being officially worth only 12% of the KS2 tests, you can see that in reality, it affects 42% of the marks available.

In short, don't trust what you read, Kate.

My general feelings about KS2 and the later stages of primary education are that children are expected to learn too much. There is so much in the curriculum, I don't think the average child has a chance to take it all in in any kind of depth. I think the curriculum should be streamlined, and the children should be expected to know "less stuff betterererer".

Oh, and I think the answer lies in giving teachers more money, more motivation and more status - with the quid pro quo that the shit ones get kicked out more quickly and efficiently.

Jill Murphy wrote:

My general feelings about KS2 and the later stages of primary education are that children are expected to learn too much. There is so much in the curriculum, I don't think the average child has a chance to take it all in in any kind of depth. I think the curriculum should be streamlined, and the children should be expected to know "less stuff betterererer".

Oh, and I think the answer lies in giving teachers more money, more motivation and more status - with the quid pro quo that the shit ones get kicked out more quickly and efficiently.

Oh, I am in agreement with everything you say there, Jill. I did my degree when my daughter was in primary school - I was doing combined studies at Kingson and did the 'minor' as it were in Education. I largely focussed on primary education, as that interested me because of the fact she was there.

There definitely was overcrowding in the curriculum, especially in the early days. I suspect the same is still the case.

My daughter is now in her first year of GCSEs, so I've tried to get some idea of what is expected of her (though of course if you ask a teenager, you get 'the usual' or 'nothing'...)

http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/pdf/AQA-3702-W-SP-07.pdf - that's the full text of the AQA specification for the English GCSE to be sat in 2007 (when my daughter will sit it).

There is no specific 'weighting' for grammar, though the use of correct grammar and spelling is mentioned.

I want one of these:



I could order it from here, but I don't know if they'll ship the the UK.

I love the text accompanying it as well:

television without pity wrote:

good grammar costs nothing

Spend any time on an internet message board -- hell, even on a professionally produced website's editorial content -- and one thing will become dishearteningly clear: the number of people in the world who can put together a coherent sentence is dropping by the day.

Grammatical horrors surround us every day: "it's" where there should be "its"; quotation marks used for emphasis, where there should be italics; comma splices out the wazoo. If we have to read "for all intensive purposes" one more damn time, we won't be responsible for our actions.

Fortunately, we do have some recourse against grammatical offenses, short of justifiable homicide. As with any movement, the attempt to restore good grammar to its rightful importance requires both constant vigilance and a steady influx of new activist-recruits. Wearing this shirt around should help you get at least a couple of people who see it on the side of truth and righteousness.

Ha! It's not just me.[/quote]