I'm not surprised at all. Comprehensives haven't insisted on correct grammar or spelling for a couple of decades or more, so the young teachers are victims of the same system. Mind you it has become perfectly acceptable for them to say "Oh I'm not very good at spelling/maths/grammar" rather than to actually try and improve.
Commentators should feel free to mention pots and kettles if they wish.
13 comments:
My eldest child's English teacher was less than impressed when I pointed out errors in her report. She'd even managed to spell 'grammar' wrong.
Gleed Girls' Technology College is claiming a new record after one of their teachers sent out...
You've made the same subject both a singular and a plural. Tsk.
We never had this trouble when the most any teacher wrote on your end-of-year report was “could do better”, “satisfactory”, “tries hard”, or, if you were lucky, “V.G.”
Callum, when using collective nouns or noun phrases which can be treated as singular or plural (like Gleed Girls' Technology College in Spalding, Lincolnshire), is it really wrong to change mid-passage or mid-sentence from treating them as singular to treating them as plural? Do you have a source for this?
Well, sadly I don't suppose for one minute it's the only example of this sort of thing, nor even the worst. But since I gather from the original article that it was sent as an email, why on earth didn't the teacher use a spell-checker? Presumably he/she didn't realize there might be anything wrong with it.
If any of our schoolmasters had done this in my day, we'd never have let them live it down!
Cabbage: In answer to your question, yes it is, in the opinion of most professional sub-editors. I am a professional sub-editor.
Have a look at the last paragraph of page 31 here.
What I find particularly funny is that the Telegraph article missed at least four howlers:
1. Meet with s/b meet
2. She was argumentative and even bordering on disrespectful s/b She was argumentative; even bordering on disrespectful (or ... argumentative and even bordered on ...)
3. Should be a full stop between "at times" and "however"
4. Need a comma after "however" (2 occurrences)
I wrote on this subject on own blog a few days ago when the Daily Telegraph reported that "Pupils will be penalised in exams for poor spelling, punctuation and grammar under a sweeping overhaul of the education system." Where are the teachers who are going to ensure pupils don't lose marks due to their poor grammar and spelling?
http://english-pensioner.blogspot.com/2010/11/spelling-and-grammar-back-on-syllabus.html
True life example of a teacher's spelling and grammar in operation.
Scene: On a bus that has just had a puncture, and is, as a consequence, going to be late.
Passenger: Its, like, its me first day at work, innit? So I gonna look, like, really shit, inni?
Driver: I'm very sorry. What do you do?
Passenger: I'm, like, a teacher, inni?
Driver: /facepalm.
No, you are nothing like a teacher, are you?
@English Pensioner:
Get the editors of the Times of India to come teach English over here?
Callum, it's a bit more complicated than that. Google "singular they" to see what I mean. E.g., do you write "the crowd raised its hats" or "... their hats"? I'd say that either is (both are?) acceptable.
Funnily enough it's different in French (a native tells me): it can only be "la foule enleva son chapeau."
This is an excerpt from an email I received from the University Of Toronto
Here are information how to check your final grade and how to get a certificate request form when you finished all required courses....
.....Check you final grade. (Please don’t check your final grade on Blackboard.) – You can check your final grade after writing the final exam for 3 weeks.
If you have finished the courses required for the certificate you have been pursuing, you have to complete a certificate request form........ It will take about 3 weeks for the registration office to process your request. I you haven’t received it, please contact xxxx to follow up.
Seems like it is a problem the world over
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