Evaluation

[oldspice]

It's that time of year when we have to ask students to fill in evaluation forms about the learning and skills they have developed over the academic year.

 

To the question How has the college helped you develop your skills? one little treasure wrote:

 

Collage as helpt with my spellin an grammer.

 

He wasn't in my group.

 

 

I don't believe that, you're making it up!

[smurfboy]

Sadly I think it is all too possible.

[Scarlet Passion]

Oh dear.

He must have been really bad before then.

 

Is this his final year or does he have more time to..... erm...... polish his newly developed skills?

He sounds like he'd fit right in in some of my classes...... Let's just say he wouldn't stand out much in the crowd!

[oldspice]

I find that at least 70% of 16-19 year old students spell college as collage, even when the word is only a few feet/inches away for them to copy. About 40% regularly write using street/text language for formal purposes as in the following example:

 

dis b a gd plce to lrn da bilding trade an dat

 

 

Most older learners, even those in HE classes, regularly confuse affect/effect, advice/advise,  personal/personnel,  practise/practice, licence/license, its/it's,  there/their, there/they're, your/your'e, principal/principle.

 

The most common error I have to tackle is confusing singular possessives with plural nouns - for example writing party's when they mean parties.

 

 

[goldencup]

It would drive me mad - I don't know how you have the patience!  I've even noticed some of the errors you've described in newspapers lately.

[Cherry_Ripe]

I regularly get emails from lecturers who say they want to make a booking "all day on Tuesday's". These are the ones teaching our future school teachers to teach!

 

I find that at least 70% of 16-19 year old students spell college as collage, even when the word is only a few feet/inches away for them to copy. About 40% regularly write using street/text language for formal purposes as in the following example:

dis b a gd plce to lrn da bilding trade an dat

Most older learners, even those in HE classes, regularly confuse affect/effect, advice/advise,  personal/personnel,  practise/practice, licence/license, its/it's,  there/their, there/they're, your/your'e, principal/principle.

The most common error I have to tackle is confusing singular possessives with plural nouns - for example writing party's when they mean parties.

Spicegirl,
of course these commonly confused pairs you quote above are in a wholely different catergory to the semi-literate passage you initially quoted.  The former represents a really sad, but all too common, dire level of literacy. While the latter is more a reflection on the fact that most people don't take an interest in our beautiful language.  I don't think I could find one person in my department at work who could tell me the difference between licence and license.  Except maybe for our Italian and French customer service guys!  Unfortunately I could find any number of people, who wud rite stuff down like this!  While I'm on my soap box yesterday I saw a sheet on a box of customer returns, it read: Customer return's.

Aaaaaaaaaarghhhh!   bounty hunter2007-05-24 08:48:06

[goldencup]

Some of us may recall that a moderator on another forum that we used had as her tagline - 'Licenced to Spell'

[R0bbie]

Was it on 'Bring it Back'?

[smurfboy]

It was indeed.

My boss kept telling me yesterday to add an 'asterix' to a product page explaining a delivery charge. Why he wanted a French cartoon character on our website I'll never know!

[Cherry_Ripe]

It was indeed.

My boss kept telling me yesterday to add an 'asterix' to a product page explaining a delivery charge. Why he wanted a French cartoon character on our website I'll never know!

 

 Smurfy, please ask your boss if it would be OK to use an obelix instead next time.