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Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar
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."
I use "perchance" ...
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
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.
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.
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
Remember one simple fact: the skill set required for someone to get a Ph.D in any given field has very little correlation with the skillsets required for such tasks as dressing oneself, attending to personal hygeine, or speaking in coherent sentences. The only "skills" required to get a Ph.D are (a) access to enough money to exist as a student for the requisite time, (b) the ability to regurgitate what your professors wish to hear, and (c) the ability to attach oneself to a previous Ph.D recipient long enough to have one's hand held through the process of writing a thesis.
As a PhD who can tell the difference between its/it's, they're/their/there, I take a bit of offense at your opening paragraph.
I do see many students who struggle with this, but to simply say that all I needed was money and the ability to regurgitate what the professor wanted to hear me say demeans that actual scientific contributions that my research made.
Then again, maybe you're in the liberal arts and not sciences so things are different for you. ;) Dammit, there's an emoticon.
However, I must agree with the rest of your post. Excellent and insightful post that's spot-on, even if it started a bit misguided.
They've spent the last 12 years of their lives not learning math, reading and writing, but rather the 12 pilars of Islam and Susie has two mommies
Excuse me? What does Islam have to do with it? I'm a muslim, doing a PhD in molecular biology. I learned the basics of islam and fail to see the connection.
Though I agree with the rest of your comment.