Slashdot Mirror
Is Germany Raising a Generation of Illiterates?
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "Over at Starts With A Bang, the weekly question comes in from Germany, where we're informed: 'In Germany, many teachers have adopted a new way of teaching children to write properly. The way is called "Writing by Reading" and essentially says: Write as you wish, you're not bound by any rules. Recently, this way of teaching has been heavily criticized [link in German], but not before it has been "tested" on several years of school children.' The reading wars have been going on in the US, too, but will this wind up having a negative outcome? Or, as this piece argues, is it likely to be a wash?"
I realize that Slashdot Summaries are one of the important, protected, habitats of a mixture of questionable proofreading and overt editorializing; but isn't something important being left out here?
The scheme in question is known as 'write by reading'. This apparently boils down to 'write however you want', according to a blog post that barely touches on the matter aside from a link to a German newspaper. Is it possible that this 'write by reading' theory involves some 'reading' somewhere? Maybe the notion that children will pick up grammar by exposure to it, which would make spending the time previously allocated to Learning Your Grammar Rules Children on reading things that are both examples of good writing and also useful, interesting, or otherwise better than distilled essence of grammar a plausible alternative?
Now, I'd be the first to agree that the standards of pedagogical research are... notably tepid... and education is much ruled by fads, many with little or no basis in evidence beyond anecdotes; but can we really have a useful discussion if we are going to start from a position of such inspiring intellectual honesty?
The question: "Do children pick up grammar from exposure to well written, but not otherwise grammar focused, texts sufficiently efficiently that we are better off skipping the lessons in pure grammar in favor of receiving the grammar as a side effect of reading that will also have other uses?" is a perfectly reasonable one, and it isn't immediately obvious which side the facts would come down on, so some research would be nice; but I'm pretty sure that 'Writing by Reading' is not actually a polite expression for 'Thare iz no ruls in Sckool.'
People who are encouraged as kids to be sloppy about their writing tend to emerge from adolescence sloppy about their thinking too. This is a cliche but it is, unfortunately, quite an accurate one. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but where I live there is a generation of people who can't spell or read efficiently and this is reflected in how shallow their thoughts are.
Language rules are critical to communication. Eventually if too many linguistic rules and word meanings are discarded, communication becomes essentially impossible as statements don't have the same meaning to both parties in the discussion. There are some rules that don't make a lot of sense, but they are what they are and mostly need to be adhered to in order to ensure that communication can happen.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm torn between the issue. I discovered old letters in my house from the 1800's and was able to glimpse in the past of how life was like back then. The letters had their words written phonetically, and while I did "notice" what I perceived to be errors at the time, I did understand the letter and remembered that eduction wasn't necessarily standardized back then and not everyone had access or could afford to attend school.
Fast forward to today and a part of me believes that if an educator is actually teaching words and meanings to students that their should be actually definitive meanings for terms when given the chance. We know that written language is derived from verbal communication which is why we used phonetics in the first place. So, for example, if a teacher was teaching the world "there" without a definitive meaning, then students would always have to rely on context clues to figure out if the communicator is saying the equivalent to "there, their, or they're". Which can become even more confusing if there are other words that are also homophones in the same sentence.
Granted we already did with this when we speak, but if you are reading words, then there is the chance to be explicit and avoid the confusion from the beginning as you can specify intent with words.
Again, I'm not the grammar police (English was always my worst subject), but I'm torn between if grammar is overbearing or necessary. Instructions are clearer when a standard exists, but then again someone being pedantic about bad grammar (commas) when the meaning clearly gets across merely seems to belittle someone to feel superior about something irrelevant to the topic. Case and point, when I write a paragraph to defeat someone's argument and they point out that I didn't capitalize a nationality, inferring my argument is thus invalid.
-my 2 cents
I'm hungry. Lets eat grandma!
I'm hungry. Lets eat, grandma!
You troglodyte.
There should be an apostrophe in there.