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The kids aren't all write: functionally illiterate and frankly not bothered
21 February 2008
Orientation classes for first-years offer a chilling insight into an entire cohort's lack of spelling and grammar skills, says a university lecturer
Higher education orientation. The phrase sounds so innocent, but it incorporates so much. Where I work, the compulsory first-year HEO module officially covers academic essay writing, referencing, research skills and bibliographies. The course outline gives us scope to go through essay structure, the importance of creating an argument, attributing quotes, the perils of plagiarism - and the intention is, of course, to orientate students, make sure they've found their feet in academia, identify any major problems and direct them to the learning support unit should they need it.
So far so good, and an eminently sensible provision, designed to ensure that everyone is up to scratch. Of course, there will be gaps in every student's knowledge. Usually, an extended essay requiring full Harvard referencing and a complete bibliography will be an entirely new challenge, and this is most certainly work that should be introduced and covered in the first term of university. These concepts of referencing and producing a bibliography are frequently ones that confuse students, necessitating revision sessions prior to their first pieces of assessed work.
One might think, however, that the idea of an essay having an introduction, a body and a conclusion should be very familiar to a student who's been through A levels and been accepted into a university. In practice, the essay-writing skills I teach are very rarely revision. From the basic subject-verb-object sentence construction to the possessive apostrophe, this is a world of revelation to first-year students. More often than not, they are bewildered to hear that they can't copy and paste paragraphs from Wikipedia. I can't count the number of battles I've had with students when I've tried to explain that Wikipedia isn't a valid academic source.
As far as I can tell, these basic academic skills are not being covered at A level at all, and students are coming straight to us with no idea of how to write academically - or indeed how to write at all. I've taken to asking my first-years to do a piece of reflective, descriptive writing in our first session together so I can assess their ability. In my first term of teaching, I expected I'd have to correct the odd spelling mistake or go through the procedure of quoting direct speech. In fact, I found I had to correct fistfuls of spelling mistakes, adding in commas and full stops to entirely unpunctuated paragraphs, and asking students to clarify what they meant.
Of course I'm willing to make allowances. Students working in English as an additional language, mature students getting back into the swing of education, those who have dyslexia or other obvious and statemented learning disabilities - there are genuine reasons for them to be struggling with writing fluently and extendedly. I enjoy working with students from a non-traditional background who are relishing their brand-new access to education. However, when students have progressed through the UK education system to the first year of a degree course and still can't make themselves understood in writing in their mother tongue there is a problem, and this is particularly the case in my field of humanities, where many students want to go on to work in creative, literate industries such as journalism, copywriting and even teaching.
I gauged opinion from my colleagues across academic disciplines, to make sure that it wasn't just me being overly picky. It wasn't. My colleague Jonathan told me: "It's definitely our job to help students develop their academic skills, but the key word is 'develop'. Those skills should already be there. But in practice we do start from scratch in some cases, and this seems now inevitable."
It seems to be an endemic problem, with many lecturers now lowering their standards, or even not recognising spelling or grammar errors. One of my third-year dissertation students looked at the corrections I'd made to her draft thesis with absolute disgust and said to me: "I don't understand why you're so picky about my spelling and punctuation. Nobody's ever told me there's a problem before." I don't doubt it. She was 22, she was bright, her work was easily comprehensible, and I was the first person to point out to her that her writing was littered with silly spelling mistakes. Of course constructing a clear and concise argument and having research skills are more important than dotting every i and crossing every t, but surely perfection of presentation should be the ultimate goal? I doubt that my corrections made any impact on my third-year student whatsoever. Old habits die hard.
My colleague Ruth suspects that perfectionists are a dying breed. "Bad grammar is everywhere you look, and I don't think students care about improving their basic skills. One of the senior teachers at our university can't spell or use grammar; nor can the Government; nor can several major retailers. What chance do we have? We're going to grammar hell in a handcart."
The writer, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a university lecturer
Readers' comments
In an age of text-speak, what can one expect from our students? Academics in universities can't be expected to spend time marking students spelling and grammatical errors. We are told these days that we are allocated all of 12 minutes per student per item of assessed work to mark their essays. Ridiculous!
The article isn't criticising research skills, though, but essay-writing skills, which, even with textbook-based A-levels, should still be encouraged at sixth-form level, surely?
'In an age of text-speak, what can one expect from our students?'. I am both a University student and a fully competent user of a mobile phone and I cannot say I have ever been tempted to insert so called 'text speak' in to assessed work. To suggest that students are 'frankly not bothered' about grammar and spelling surely serves only to make it easier for lecturers to voice their incredulity, and to then blame it on 'text-speak' is unfounded and ridiculous. Of course I am not condoning bad grammar and spelling but to suggest they come about as a result of self-conscious (and often ironic) text message usages combined with some sort of mass apathy is proper LOL.
-----"I can't count the number of battles I've had with students when I've tried to explain that Wikipedia isn't a valid academic source."-------- I hope you explained why. That Wikipedia, like Britannica or Encarta, is a secondary source and that you should give the primary sources that are always quoted in a Wikipedia article that follows the guidelines. <p>Or it is just facile snobbism?
I am most grateful for the article on 'illiterate kids', it's a relief to see that I am not obsessed or a stickler, or biased by more positive experiences in teaching abroad. The article reflects precisely my experience as a senior lecturer in an undergraduate programme at a UK university. After a year and a half of full-time teaching here, I am shocked about the levels of illiteracy that I encounter amongst students with UK A-Levels. Many students are completely oblivious to the value of a grammatically correct sentence and quite a few are 'frankly not bothered'.The usual explanations (TV/computer/SMS generation) don't seem good enough - my guess is that the fault lies with secondary education and policy driven increases in student-numbers. Most students are not stupid, they have just not been taught properly (not the actual skills, nor why they're important). But with cohorts in the hundreds, unless there is a dedicated programme for it, it is simply impossible to teach basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, and general writing alongside and in between the actual subject sessions. The consequences of this are unsatisfactory standards in essay writing and a constant struggle to get students to see the problem in the few seminars and one-on-one tutorials that they get (instead of having interesting discussions about arguments). In the end, after three years, some students will have come around, most will have improved, and the rest just gets away with it. Overall though, an opportunity will have been lost to use essay writing to think about interesting subjects. If students struggle with reading a chapter (or even a page), and writing a simple summary of it, there's little scope for developing ideas, arguments, and critical thinking, and that is perhaps the central and most frustrating aspect of the whole problem. I also sympathise with the reader comment (Dumbing Down: Hit or Myth) that reflects on the author's wanting to remain anonymous and relates this to the general state of affairs in UK Higher Education. I am not looking forward to raising the issue in my institution and perhaps ask for an assessment of standards, requirements, and possible solutions to the problem, as I can see that findings would not fit with budgets and the very gingerly ways in which students are treated here. It is just a massive problem which, really, universities should not have to deal with in the first place.
I came across this article by chance. I only want to say one thing. Grammar should be taught at the primary level. By the time students reach the secondary levels in school it is too late.
RE: Above article The kids aren't all write: functionally illiterate and frankly not bothered 21 February 2008 The writer of this article should check his own use of the words "Can't and They're". In the context of this article he should have used: 'cannot" 'can not" and "they are" as correct and proper english. If he or she is a university lecturer, he should "practice what he preaches".
Janet Marsh, you come across as a pedant rather than someone who cares, or knows, about correctly punctuated and grammatical English.
Janet Marsh and Colin Self. If you have nothing useful to contribute, you nitpick grammar and punctuation. Must be closet humanities academics who always have chips on their shoulders. Often very opinionated. If you are in a post-92 universities, these sorts of remarks would abruptly end your career
"Come on...", your irritation with me and Janet Marsh is identical to my irritation with Janet, so your comment is a bit pot calling the kettle black. To take such a dim view of humanities academics you must be a closet natural scientist. What sort of 'a universities' (sic) do you work at that you show such indifference to the quality of written communication? Would that be a post-92 universities (sic) by any chance?
Colin Self: With an air of Self importance you utter those words, demonstrating that you are a closet humanities academic ( you could not choose better words and copy mine changing to point at my area! Some communicator!!!! ) What you call" the quality of written communication " is the stick the likes you often brandish to show demonstrate your Self importance. You need to grow up a bit. By the way, use different set of sentences as response to improve the quality of your written communication !!!! As for as I am concerned I work in a university which in the top 5 of the Times League Table. I am much more tolerant than you are, because I am not a cynic, not a closet academic and above all do not have Self importance.
This thread generates so much heat and not much light1