Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar

Posted by timothy on from the end-thats-inn-kanada dept.

innocent_white_lamb writes "30% of freshman university students fail a 'simple English test' at Waterloo University (up from 25% a few years ago. Academic papers are riddled with 'cuz' (in place of 'because') and even include little emoticon faces. One professor says that students 'think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words.' At Simon Fraser University, 10% of students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses."

4 of 1,343 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sit, grab the popcorn and read on by _Shad0w_ · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I use "perchance" ...

    --

    Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.

  2. Maybe they should simplify English by rolfwind · · Score: 0, Redundant

    For the life of me, I cannot get tenses correct in a lengthy piece of writing. Even when the mistakes are pointed out, I don't recognize them.

    But there are things in English that make it hard to learn as well. In languages like German, except for some imported words, pronunciation and spelling went hand in hand and are extremely consistent.

    How would you pronounce this:

    "Ghoti"

    If the "gh" was pronounced like like it was in "tough", the "o" like it was in "women", and the "ti" as in "nation"? And that's just the tip of the iceberg on our arbitrary rules.

    "cuz", "u", and other slang are just simplifications.

    I'm just glad we have a latin alphabet and don't have to learn kanji and the like. Talk about a long-winded system.

  3. Re:And this is how we die by Culture20 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Out of the other 30% maybe 10% become doctors, 10% become (surplus and now unwanted) engineers and 10% actually push things forward via research. The 70% lives on the backs of the 30%, farmers, blue collar workers and small business men.

    LOLWUT? I'd love to see how long society lasts without farmers, blue collar workers and small business men. We could exist for a while without doctors, engineers, and researchers ...albeit without progress, and eventually the oil will run out so we'd fall back to agrarian levels, but there would still be farmers, blue collar workers and small business men.

  4. Re:unpossible by BrokenHalo · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Hmmm. I stopped reading that article on Muphry's Law at the "History" section, where I found two redundant commas in as many lines. :-P