More and more information is available to show that young people with GCSE English grades at C or above are functionally illiterate. A family member has just had to let an apprentice go because even though she has a Grade A in English (Language AND Literature no less. Her spelling was appalling, and her grammar worse. Even left with a letter to copy she would manage to misspell three or four words and forget the punctuation. I cannot begin to tell you how deficient her skills were in answering the telephone.
More and more information is available to show that young people with GCSE English grades at C or above are functionally illiterate. A family member has just had to let an apprentice go because even though she has a Grade A in English (Language AND Literature no less. Her spelling was appalling, and her grammar worse. Even left with a letter to copy she would manage to misspell three or four words and forget the punctuation. I cannot begin to tell you how deficient her skills were in answering the telephone. This was a very bright young person with 6 Grade As and another 3 Bs at GCSE. I think the most difficult thing to deal with was the fact that she clearly didn’t care about her deficiencies. However, reading an article in the Telrgraph it appears that, again, graduates are being hammered for their deficiencies in literacy and numeracy – with a reason. The letter he quotes can only make you shudder.
John Clare says “Like many employers, I am appalled by what I read about graduate illiteracy but there's nothing like receiving an example to bring it home. I have just had a request for "infomation" - spelt that way three times - from a third-year undergraduate. It is not just the misspellings that stun me - "oppotunities", "relivence" - but the complete ignorance of grammar and style. In a clumsily constructed letter of three sentences, only the first begins with a capital letter and two have a comma where there ought to be a full stop. Yet this young man will have spent at least 16 years in our education system. How could his teachers not have noticed his ignorance, and why didn't they correct him? “ He has a recommendation which I think is good, though Uses and Abuses is good for me: I shall urge the parents (and grandparents) of all undergraduates to present them with a copy of The Elements of Style, a marvellous and timeless little book by William Strunk and E.B. White (the author of Charlotte's Web, the children's classic), published by Longman. Here, succinctly, elegantly and without fuss are the essentials of writing clear, correct English. Teachers might like a copy, too.
|