This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

poor standard of written English

Just a question: if you know an English graduate who has a pretty poor standard of written English, do you think it reflects badly on the university they went to? I guess this applies to people with degrees in most essay subjects, but particularly English.

The reason I ask is because in my gap year I did an admin job. I left in October to go to uni, and was a bit freaked out by the fact that the person who replaced me already had an English degree. She's now on holiday and I'm covering for her because it's Easter, and I've seen some appalling things. For example, at the last team meeting she took the "minites", and she's sent emails to clients without observing basic rules such as capital letters to start sentences and full-stops to end them.

What would your reaction be? :confused:

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

Kittennffc

Really depends on the situation; someone might have excellent written English in an essay or an exam, but then slack when doing everyday duties.

As she was doing things like that in her job, i'd probably be a little shocked, especially if she was an English grad, someone supposedly meant to be a guru when it comes to spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

Reply 2

Tyler Durden

There was an article about this in The Times recently. Turns out most University students can't write for **** (English students included).

It's appalling...

I am the proud owner of an A-grade in A2 level English Literature, and will not settle for anything less than perfect, usually formal, grammar. I'm outraged by the tiniest typo!

I think I'd be even more annoying if I had a degree in it!!

Reply 5

Profesh

love2learn

I am the proud

owner of an A-grade in A2 level English Literature, and will not settle for anything less than perfect, usually formal, grammar. I'm outraged by the tiniest typo!

I think I'd be even more annoying if I had a degree in it!!

Please, don't be. A-Level English Literature is, if you'll excuse my affectedly idio(ma)tic parlance, 'piss': certainly, assuming its supposed 'difficulty' bears any reflection upon that of the same at degree-level, I might well be relied-on to switch courses accordingly pending the conclusion of our current semester.

Reply 6

yorkshirelass

Profesh

Please, don't be. A-Level English Literature is, if you'll excuse my affectedly idio(ma)tic parlance, 'piss': certainly, assuming its supposed 'difficulty' bears any reflection upon that of the same at degree-level, I might well be relied-on to switch courses accordingly pending the conclusion of our current semester.

I doubt a degree in English is a piece of piss somehow. I actually found AS Literature hard and obtained a C in one paper. However, several people I know who cannot construct coherent sentences, let alone ones that are punctuation perfect, recently 'achieved' As in the same paper. This certainly does make me feel rather brain-dead.

Reply 7

symun

Literature as a subject is hardly one the the most difficult, now, is it? We should at least come out of it with the ability to write well proper bo(!)

Reply 8

Tyler Durden

Profesh

It really is. You study three texts (or rather, two texts and a collection of poetry) in one year. If you divide that up, you have roughly three months to spend on each individual text. Three months! Ok then there is also a synoptic module - but that involves only a couple of compulsory texts. Compare that with University where, so far, there has been around one week allocated to each text or an individual poet's work. And to be honest, and without seeming to sound arrogant, I think I could write A-grade A Level-style exam answers on any of the texts covered in a week at Uni. If you combine these factors with the stupidity of the assessment objectives - which make it possible for even the dimmest and most uninspired candidates to do relatively well - then you have a pretty easy ride. Then again, I am obviously very pleased I did it; the course served as a stepping stone and without it I couldn't be studying English right now!

Reply 9

mousey

yelwalkietalkie

I doubt a degree in English is a piece of piss somehow.

She wasn't talking about the A level there. xx

Reply 10

Tyler Durden

mousey

She wasn't talking about the A level there. xx

It's clearly not writing I have a problem with, but reading! :redface:

Edit: There we go - looks better now. Thanks for spotting that!

Reply 11

Champagne Breakfast

English language and maths should be compulsory all the way through school, as should a grounding in philosophy, politics and economics. It's ridiculous that people can get through our education system without being able to read/write English properly, without being able to do basic maths, without being able to think properly, and with no knowledge of how the real world works.

Reply 12

yorkshirelass

englishstudent

In my specification we study more texts. At AS we studied Emma, Keats (a huge chunk of his poetry), Hamlet and The Rover. At A2 we are studying A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the Metaphysicals, Pride and Prejudice, Emma again (half the synoptic is a comparison between Pride and Prejudice and Emma) and Othello. I wouldn't call any of those texts a breeze; however, I think where I go wrong and others in my class get it right is that I over complicate my answers and I find it difficult to meet assessment objectives. Even when I'm writing a practice answer and I have the AOs in front of me, I still manage to completely miss half of them out. It just doesn't come naturally. For instance, in a mock exam on Keats last year I got so carried away with what I was doing that I mentioned about 10 poems and how they interrelate thematically. When I got my paper back, I had a big fat E because you're only supposed to mention 2 or 3. It aggravates me because I'm sure there are people lazy enough only to study 2 or 3 in the first place, yet they end up with the same grade or even higher than me. This year I'm trying to 'improve' though. I read A Portrait of the Artist for my coursework and had so many possibilities swirling in my head about where I could approach the text from, but decided I would stick to literally the most basic idea I could think of. I wrote the coursework with the AOs in my face, and kept changing every sentence if I didn't think it directly answered the question or met AOs. It was possibly the most bog standard-looking piece of work ever, no originality whatsoever, and I just got told a few days ago that I received the highest mark out of 3 or 4 Literature classes in my college. Now I feel even more like an idiot.

Reply 13

yorkshirelass

The Ace is Back

It would be difficult to implement such a system though. By 14, most peoples' academic talents or lack thereof have shown themselves and thus students opt for subjects they are better in. Should we make a kid study Philosophy when he can barely construct a sentence? Should we make a kid who is amazing at Maths but cannot achieve nearly the same level in English study it for A-level? I don't think it quite works like that. Equally, I'm rubbish at Maths and if I was to study it at A-level I would undoubtedly fail it completely. The Government tried to introduce General Studies to fill in the gaps in the education of individuals whose subjects are Science/Arts biased, and look how that turned out. I think it should be up to the individual to decide what to study.

Reply 14

Champagne Breakfast

yelwalkietalkie

Should we make a kid study Philosophy when he can barely construct a sentence? Should we make a kid who is amazing at Maths but cannot achieve nearly the same level in English study it for A-level?

Goddamn right we should! I'm not talking A-level though, I'm talking basic courses, maybe 2 lessons a week, in those subjects. As in, maintain specialisation in about 3/4 subjects as we have now, but have a background of 'general studies' which are more relaxed and not exam-based, but still compulsory anyway. We have a compulsory philosophy course in my school for example, which introduced me to the subject and made me realise its importance.

Reply 15

Angelil

Don't blame the university, blame the schools.

Reply 16

Zoecb

It's completely inexcusable. love2learn has the right attitude.

Reply 17

Elusive Moose

Angelil

Don't blame the university, blame the schools.

I'd go with this to an extent. There are people in my A2 English class who don't know which one is which out of nouns, adjectives and verbs. We spent half a lesson on them. BAH! I can't believe they weren't ever told before... I was taught that in year 4/5!!

If someone can't write very well, it definitely doesn't reflect very well on the tutors at the university, that's for sure. Even my boyfriend gets told off if he doesn't write correctly in his essays, and he's doing Biology!

What's also scary is that my Mum had an undergrad from Harvard do some work experience with her school (a specialist autism unit- God knows how they found out about it!). Apparently they decided to do their dissertation on autism, or some aspect of it, and they sent the unit some proofs, just to make sure they had the facts right. Mum said she was more tempted to correct the grammar, and just re-write it in general, it was so appallingly written! You'd think someone at one of the world's best universities would be able to write properly, but apparently not! So maybe you can't judge a university on the quality of their undergraduates' writing skills...

Reply 18

kateykat

I don't think people read enough and therefore don't appreciate how important grammar is. My mum would make time to read to me every single night when I was little and I would read back to her. I strongly believe it helped me understand sentence structure subconsciously, even though at that age I couldn't have told you what a noun or a verb was.

I also think there are huge discrepancies between the quality of teaching at certain schools. I went to a primary school in Scotland where we were made to read books, learn about punctuation and basically write properly. I had a little bit of homework every single night so I was forced to study hard: we were given the ground work required to actually develop basic literacy skills. I then moved down to England at the age of 7/8 and went to a first school, where a lot of the time we would just play games and there was more emphasis upon being creative rather than sitting down and actually getting our heads down in work. When my parents mentioned homework to my teacher he was really shocked and said we were way too young to be getting any. I just felt it was so babyish and was really a step down from the satisfying education I had in Scotland.