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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."
You need to relax and do your best.. This is more anti American propaganda and I'm entirely against it.
We continue to create things that benefit the world, even though the world is against us.
How many of these 'teachers' are liberal asshats? which is a factor
in this too..
How many of these teachers secretly hate America? I had a math teacher
that I almost punched out because of his anti America rhetoric. I had him
running down the hallway.. What a god damn coward.. My meeting
with the dean was very colorful.. I will always be American in heart and mind.
This is what a true American should be, not some doubting, shitty work ethic
cowardly loser. Or an America hater like many of the jerks on this site.
Americans do your best and give the bird to anyone that doubts your
talents or cerebral gifts!!
True, it looks cheaper, but how much is the man-on-the-street paying for random strangers' education that they shouldn't be via taxes?
IMHO, affixing some kind of rigid standard to spoken language is the lazy way -- computer code it not a good analogy. computer code has to be extremely semantically rigid so the machine can understand it.
on the other hand, i can generate an infinite number of novel sentences and you can understand them -- not to mention generate words that are not "in the dictionary" and you will understand them too. language is _constantly_ evolving and changing... anyone who says otherwise is the real product of bad english teaching.
Your original post of, to put it mildly, a flaming piece of crap.
You're just cashing in on the trendy notion Americans are sub par to everyone else. The only reason that you were modded up was that it was the time of day that the Europeans were online, and they love that sort of stuff.
You're a hypocrite. "Americans are pathetic, but not me. I'm special." I bet you'd have made a great Nazi sympathizer.
And you're a genius then I take it? Prove it. I suspect you are not a genius actually. Now - You write proper english when the situation demands it (say as a paper in academia or in legal correspondence). When it does not, like on a forums or text message? That's not a place that "perfect spelling and/or grammar" really applies. After all, the correspondence is not for legal purposes generally, nor is it a paper in academia for a grade.
For example, as to when using abbreviations help: Try texting "perfect english" in every sentence you write, and see how much hassle it is with keyboards the size of a postage stamp.
Above all else? However - If you cannot derive the meanings of words and phrases within the context which they are used, it's clearly you with the problem(s).
Phrases/slang terms or abbreviations like lol & wtf are timesavers, at times. They get used, so please - get over it. Some folks are not good spellers either, but hopefully spell checkers in word processors or even webbrowsers can help they to some extent, should they elect to choose to use them.
Still, when I see spelling or grammar nazis on forums, it just makes me laugh, because 99% of the time, their critiques are blatantly off topic or erroneous!
E.G. - Recently on this very forums, I had a "writing troll" try to tell me he was a professional writer, and then he began a sentence with a conjunction (the word And). Bad mistake and I tore him up for it in fact. It was hilarious, and he ran never to reply again. It is my "forever weapon" versus the "anonymous writing troll critics" around here in fact, and I love it.
However, and in defense of a couple of your examples: Knowing possessives such as "their" versus "they are" (they're) should be correct in written correspondence. That much I would agree with, and knowing the difference between them and when to use either correctly.
As an aside: I strongly wager the "writing trolls" around here will have a field day on this topic because it's about the only time they'll get their "place in the sun" around here and not be blatantly off topic for once.