How Do Kids These Days Graduate College Not Knowing How To Spell Correctly?
How can one receive a college diploma and not know the difference between there, their and they’re? Or not know the difference between to, too and two? How are these kids graduating college if they do not know how the spell correctly, or know the difference between simple words with more than one meaning?
on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
It is often just sloppiness, and it has gotten worse with the advent of spell-checkers on computers and now with textspeak. The one which drives me crazy, since I teach marketing, is the number of students who use “add” as an abbreviation for advertisement. I keep suggesting to them that since they are in the field, they should at least be able to spell a common, two-letter word like “ad” correctly!
on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
It’s often just laziness on part of the student. It’s not necessarily the college diploma, but their foundations in English way back in grade school is what matters the most. When they have a shaky foundation, they can’t build on that, thus their English skills are quite poor. Not to mention the technology of spell-checkers and whatnot doesn’t help one bit when you’re trying to learn the nuts and bolts of a language. It’s so sad, I’ve read so many papers for friends and are riddle with grammar, punctuation and language mistakes it’s ridiculous!
on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Generalizations are fun!
on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
At my school, at least, because everything has to be typed, nobody has to know how to spell. As a person who spells fairly well, it drives me crazy. Even on in-class essays, professors will say that “as long as you’re close, spelling doesn’t matter”. I’ve only had ONE non-English professor who took off for stupid spelling mistakes like you’ve described.
Spell check has eliminated the need to spell, and it is sad.