Job Discussion Forums

[sigmoid]

Is spelling losing its importance in our modern-day society?
Are we getting lazy?
English spelling has always been controversial.
Should we just give up?

excerpted from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/15/nspell15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/15/ixhome.html

Incorrect spelling will not be penalised in English tests
By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent
(Filed: 15/05/2005)


Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks.

The rule, issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, means that pupils could spell every word wrongly in the most significant piece of writing that they are required to do and yet still receive full marks.

Ministers are particularly concerned about exam results this year, having failed to achieve their 2004 target of 75 per cent of 14-year-olds reaching the level expected in English. Just 71 per cent reached the standard, despite a multi-million pound Government strategy aimed at improving lessons in secondary schools.

The revelation of the "spelling free-for-all" in the hour-long paper has angered traditionalists who say that children should be penalised for poor spelling.

[dmb]

I guess when it comes to text messaging spelling goes out the window. Also have a look at this.(a student sent this to me)

[sigmoid]

Very good point. The mind is smarter than we think.

Antoher example [I think I'm going to get into this non-spelling thing] Two words on a cardboard packing box, but the first and last letters are covered by straps;

-EEP DR-

The good old mind can still figure it out based on the context and the fact that the possibilities are rather limited.

[basiltherat]

this has been a bit of a contoversial matter here where im working. some claim that we should penalize for mispelling. ideally, id like to see this done. unfortunatly, where the focus of training is on listening and oral production such as in our case, it wud be , i feel, rather unfair to do this here.
perhaps where training is focusing on oral and listening skills, it wud, out of preference, be better to grade on those particular skills when testing. unfortunately, such grading, particularly oral, wud be open to arbitrary and inconsistent grading unless a stringent grading criteria is put in place which up to now we have yet to set up. as it stands, we have decided to ,generally speaking, ignore poor spelling. Clearly, Arab speakers have a lot of trouble with English spelling due to the different script.
Not an ideal situation, i agree.

[Alex42]

All very interesting, but if we don�t insist on correct spelling then we�ll all be slaves to the spell-checker on Word.

I read an article yesterday saying that the kids here in Argentina can�t spell either - which defies belief, what with Spanish being pretty much phonetic and therefore very, very easy to spell!

[matttheboy]

Ah yes but Spanish has letters that sound almost identical and also silent letters and many Spanish speakers have problems:

Examples:

Estube instead of Estuve
Boy instead of Voy
Valla instead of Vaya
A instead of Ha
Ha instead of A

I have very well educated friends here who still make these mistakes. I actually have no idea how they make the mistakes as it's really obvious to me which one it should be and have never confused B and V and Y and LL even when first starting to learn the language. This is similar to the fact that many foreign learners of English understand English grammar better than native speakers-because it is expressly learned.

[valley_girl]

[Chasgul]

As someone once said: English is the easiest language to speak badly and be understood.

The relevance of correct spelling comes when and if someone wants to learn other languages within a linguistic group. Knowing how to relate daughter to dushterya requires a knowledge of correct spelling and a few basic rules on consonant shifts between languages.

For anyone who's wondering 'dushterya' is the Bulgarian.

[Glenski]

[Roger]

We need to be a little "lax", but not overindulge. If they feel their own spelling is standard, how can they read a true standard English text?
Come to think of it: my CHinese students memorise, memorise and memorise some more, all to the effect of forgetting how to differentiate between words of somewhat similar structures but very different meanings. Either you cannot understand their pronunciation (because they adopt a uniform pronunciation for a host of different words such as "test", "text", "taxi", "tax"), or you cannot understand their written English ("we took a test to the airport").
Sadly, I find that penalising students by deducting points for misspellings is more effective than encouraging them to make errors in the erroneous belief they will eventually learn the differences on their own.

[Nauczyciel]

[Alex42]

[zaneth]

I'd knid of lkie to hvae a ltltie cupmoetr pagrorm taht wolud radnmoize the irennatl lterets of wodrs in a txet so I cloud tyr tihs out on a lagrer baiss.

What about when part of the new order matches a different existing word (cupmoetr) or is a possible arrangement, something that looks English but isn't?

[zaneth]

I'd knid of lkie to hvae a ltltie cupmoetr pagrorm taht wolud radnmoize the irennatl lterets of wodrs in a txet so I cloud tyr tihs out on a lagrer baiss.

What about when part of the new order matches a different existing word (cupmoetr) or is a possible arrangement, something that looks English but isn't?

[dmb]

Do you use predictive text on your mobile phone? Sometimes it annoys me but sometimes I guess it makes me spell correctly. You know those words do they end -ence or -ance