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TheLongWayHome
Joined: 07 Jun 2006
Posts: 1016
Location: San Luis Piojosi
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 Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| I just can't believe that people spellcheck other people's posts here then post the corrections/some snide remark. Do you really have the time? And I thought travel broadened the mind. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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Well, TEFLing certainly increases (or should increase!) one's tolerance for substandard usage.   |
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wildchild
Joined: 14 Nov 2005
Posts: 519
Location: Puebla 2009 - 2010
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| Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, TEFLing certainly increases (or should increase!) one's tolerance for substandard usage. |
non-standard usage, that is. you wouldn't want to standardize the referring to some 'lects as inferior to others, would you? |
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eslstudies
Joined: 17 Dec 2006
Posts: 1061
Location: East of Aden
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 12:33 am Post subject: |
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| When posters can't even spell [e.g. "celery" for "salary" - this happened a few years back], or distinguish homophones [e.g. "sight" for "site" on a very recent thread] on the thread title correctly though, it is a serious cause for concern. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:07 am Post subject: |
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| fluffyhamster wrote: |
I'm really not sure what the OP's point is (or even was). It is surely at the very least contradictory to observe that adverts and posts are often badly written (whilst making similar errors yourself), and doubly so to then go on to say that attention to detail is ultimately not important.
The people placing adverts here and doing the hiring (and firing) are often not native speakers, so can be excused some errors (which are hopefully not indicative of the way their entire outfit is run); and the people posting discussion on Dave's are often in hurry, drunk, stupid, trolling or just plain crazy (so again, most respondents don't bother picking up on errors and hope that such posters present themselves better when formally teaching - and let's not forget that teaching is usually considered a formal responsibility); then, we all make errors sometimes, and some people can apparently always be motivating, interesting teachers despite their flaws (especially if they are ensuring that the students gain a good command of spoken English, without continual recourse to the printed text, IPA etc). I very much doubt however that the majority of those teachers with good spelling and grammar are so obssessed with detail that they are neglecting classroom dynamics etc (if anything, they will pay as much if not greater attention to these less formal details because it is in their nature already to do so, and also because they have mastered the formal aspects to a greater extent and will thus not need to worry about or be "distracted" by whatever "problems" as and when they arise). |
I second fluffyhamster's motion.
It never ceases to amaze me to hear talk about lowering standards and then to see teachers calling for the lowering of standards. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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| I wasn't too happy with 'substandard' myself, but I am sure that some would still quibble with 'non-standard'; either term can be held to be derogatory. The fact is however that we are not usually employed to teach (our own) regional/dialectal forms explicitly; such forms may creep into our speech from time to time, but in writing we are probably expected to be aware of and teach to a "standard" (basically that which we should have learnt in our school years, and certainly our college ones, if we went). Anyway, I was more thinking about being tolerant of errors (or "errors") in non-native usage than in native (and possibly colleagues'!), even though the thread seems more concerned with native (native teacher) usage. |
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