Students Massacre The English Language. Again.
Why I am hardly surprised by this:
Analyses of scripts show that the quality of written English is continuing to cause concern. Extracts from essays written in the exam hall reveal muddled thinking, bad grammar, repetition and inappropriate English.
History examiners were particularly critical. They said names were often misspelt even when they were written in the exam question. A question about the rise of National Socialism elicited misspellings of “fascism”, “bias” and even “Hitler”. The information website Wikipedia, which anyone can edit, was also used as a supposedly authoritative source. (The Telegraph)
Before anyone claim it, this is not proof that A-levels have been devalued and other such crap. I wrote my piece on the A-levels on the day they came out, gobsmacked that more than a quarter of A-level results were As. But the fact that there is a “litany” of grammatical errors on A-level papers does not mean that those who got As made these mistakes. These mistakes were made by those at the other end of the scale, such as in the 3.1% of papers which failed.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m sure I have read basically the same article every year - but it isn’t even a “recent” thing, since even “examiners in 1952 wrote about ‘colloquialisms, crude forms and the abuse of punctuation’.”Also, any significant increase in the numbers of these sorts of errors in A-level exam scripts than before can be put pretty much entirely down to this Labour government’s drive to make people stay on at school to get A-levels, when they would be best served by going and getting a job or to a Further Education college and getting a more suitable type of teaching and resultant qualification for them.
What causes these sort of massacres of the English language in the first place? Part of it is inevitably down to modern technology - text speak on mobile phones, the spelling check facility in word processors, and the general abuse of spelling and grammar prevalent on the internet. These are of course “social” reasons for the mistakes. At least some could be simply down to exam nerves!
Can any of us claim to have never made a spelling mistake in our lives? To have a perfect grasp of the English language so flawless that no accusation could made against it? Of course not. I’ve made plenty of mistakes just whilst typing this post. Most of them were typos rather than actual spelling or grammar mistakes, though. I’ve also had essays returned to me from lecturers with grammar edits which have actually been wrong [though not all of them have been].
However, despite everything I have said above, there is no excuse for misspelling the word “Hitler” or words used in the question. Those people deserve to be given large conical hats with the letter “D” written on them, and sent to sit in the corner. Also, who would use Wikipedia as an academic source?!
Source: The Telegraph
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Most of them were typos rather than actual spelling or grammar mistakes, though.
Yes, nost of ours are typos from speed and finger coordiantion at the keyboard.
However, spelling has definitely dipped - the poor sods who were educated in the 70s and 80s just missed out on spelling and grammar and once lost, it never comes back.
James, I was educated in the Nineties [and Noughties], so if I know how to spell and use grammar, so should those educated in the 70s and 80s!