To hell in a handbasket.

[sister_luck]

Inspired by a post about language, originally triggered by this, here's my lengthy reply.



I believe that every generation of teachers, parents and authority figures bemoans a lack of language skills - it's like those complaints about 'young people nowadays' that seem to be so now, but then turn out to be from Roman times.

That said, this decline is indeed real, but I often think that it gets fudged with other issues. For example, in my form (which of course isn't a representative sample) several of the children with an immigrant background have actually less problems with reading comprehension and vocabulary than some of the kids who are born and bred Germans. Sometimes, the bilingual (or multilingual) background actually helps them understand structures better.

Certainly, that study isn't far off the mark. There are kids though who are not at home in any of their languages, like one of the boys in my class who is originally from Russia but counts as a German because he's got German ancestors: He can't read Russian, but it's the language he speaks at home and he really struggled with German which I believe is more a problem of not getting enough input. He's catching up fast at the moment, due to the fact that he has more of a social life now.

Strangely enough, I've never heard students say that they don't care about their bad spelling because as long as they're understood they are not bothered by it. Maybe once they're in secondary school they know what is expected of them. As far as bad spelling is concerned it's often just a sign of a lack of concentration, though some of them do struggle with the rules.

Most of my students know that there are different registers and there are words that you shouldn't use in a text for school because they're too colloquial. Sometimes they make a conscious decision to use a colloquialism because to their mind it just fits the situation better, sometimes they just can't come up with an alternative and sometimes they don't realize that a certain expression is too slangy.

There are other students though who genuinely struggle with the structures of language, whose sentences are messy or incomplete or just go on forever. Sometimes it's because they're actually dyslexic, sometimes it's because they are just not good at languages. Not everyone can be good at writing and I believe there has never been a time when everyone spoke or wrote according to the highest standard.

Do we care less today about these standards? I don't think so, or there wouldn't be that many complaints. Are standards actually slipping? They're certainly changing - when we read a text today that was written 100 years ago, it often seems stilted to us and I'm sure that the way we speak and write will feel dated soon, too. Does that mean our language becomes less valuable because of that? I don't know - maybe there was a time when regular people wrote letters regularly and maybe people then were much better at it, but I'm sure that even then there were well-educated folks who complained about the rough language of the common people. I believe that there will always be human beings around who are creative and original with the way they use language and thus I'm not worried that we're losing it, whatever that high ideal of language might be.

Comments

[gillo]

I have found children who really don't care about their spelling - particularly in the 12-14 age-range. Lots more who seem not to recognise a mistake, however many times they are reminded. (A common local mistake is to write "must of" instead of "must have", and it doesn't seem to matter how often I point this out, they still do it.)

Certain things are changing - the use of apostrophes is much more slapdash than even a decade ago - I see "it's" used as a possessive pronoun in published material, not just in children's work. I find less concern for accuracy in my older groups of students - the 16-18 year-olds who in theory have chosen to specialise in English.

Yes, dinosaurs always bemoan declining standards, but I do genuinely feel bright children are reading much less now than a decade or two ago, with a corresponding decline in reading and writing skills. Books I used with 12-year-olds fifteen years ago now seem to be too hard for children of similar ability two or even three years older.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

See, this is what I post when I'm not wearing my teacher hat, but looking at the problem from the point of view of someone who is interested in linguistics: Then I become much more of a descriptivist and worry less about the actual writing skills of my students.

Maybe I'm also lucky that I don't teach German and while there are a bunch of mistakes that I'm tired of seeing (here are some examples: informations, confusing interested and interesting, confusing will/want, get/become etc.) these mistakes are not a sign of a decline in language standards. I do struggle though with the fact that the students don't want to read texts in my Social Studies/History classes because they find them too difficult to understand.

The confusion between it's and its annoys me, too, but I'm not sure whether bad proofreading is actually a recent problem. I've got an old paperback edition of Dune that is so full of spelling mistakes that it really distracted me from the actual content. That said, looking at the local paper, I get the impression that they have fired their proofreader...

I'll try to dig it up but I read about a study somewhere that reading is not actually in decline. I'm not entirely sure that I believe it myself - most of my students are rather reluctant readers even the ones specialising in English language and literature. But then I remember that I was the odd one out for reading so many books when I was in school.

So, the teacher in me basically agrees with you (and that's part of our job description, I believe, to worry about language standards and to highlight these problems).

When I look at language change as a concerned citizen, I suddenly become a lot less concerned, because I sometimes think that the high standards of the past are merely an illusion. For example, the school I went to had students with parents from mostly educated backgrounds and thus students there were more receptive to reading difficult books whereas nowadays these schools have opened up to pupils who come from one-book-families and thus it's more challenging to get them to read.

[gillo]

I am not convinced about standards of accuracy in the past - I've read plenty of letters from people in their 80s which are riddled with errors. I do think that bright children from affluent households read less - they have far more calls on their attention nowadays. Much of their reading is online and in "txtspk" too - the unpunctuated, poorly-spelled, uncapitalised form of English used for IM and texting. They always seem astonished when I tell them they may not use it in work for me.

I subscribe to a monthly sewing magazine. The proofreading is atrocious. At an exhibition I actually chatted to the editor about this - and it was clear that there were certain basic rules she didn't actually know.

O tempora. O mores.

[distractogirl.livejournal.com]

When I was in my last primary school before I pulled myself out of university, I was in a class of four to five year olds. When I was that age I was able to write my name clearly and was starting to attempt to spell words - when I got them wrong I was firmly but gently corrected on my spelling - when I was painting with the kids, I was asked to encourage them to write what they had drawn near to it in pen. 'Great' I thought 'I can encourage them to hold a pen, and help teach them how to spell things, I can do this.' I was then corrected by the teacher, yes I was to help them hold a pen, yes I was to help them work out what to write, but... I was under no circumstances to alter how they spell things. If they want to spell mouse 'mawce' then they're prefectly entitled to. I then spent a couple of days in the seven to eight year old class. Their teacher was extremely strict about their spelling, and if they got something wrong they had to write it out three times in another book, if they hadn't finished their work because of this they were kept in.

I think that this suggests that children in this country can't be encouraged to care about how they spell things, because they are getting mixed messages. What's more is the four/five year olds were so confused when they were sitting there and being allowed to see three different spellings of words, when it had been previously suggested that there was only one way of spelling them.

I think I'm rambling now so I'll stop, but did any of that make sense?

[distractogirl.livejournal.com]

Drat. That reads like I'm blaming the teachers, which I'm not, I'm blaming the teaching methods which has to do with the national curriculum, and the sense of political correctness or whatever it is that has brought about the trend for teaching trainee teachers not to use the negetive when you can use a positive.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

No, I get where you're coming from and I know the problem. It's difficult to achieve the balance between encouraging children to write and telling them how to spell properly what they've written, because it can be quite a downer when you've worked hard on a text about your 'mawce' and then someone comes along and tells you 'Wow, that's a cute text, but all the words are actually written with entirely different letters'. Both approaches you describe seem wrong to me, but I'm not a primary school teacher, so I'm not entirely sure how to do this properly.

[distractogirl.livejournal.com]

These kids were young enough that the only thing they were writing was the name of the animal. So correcting them wouldn't have required the destuction of anything they had worked hard on, and the way I wanted to do it was discuss what they were going to write first and encourage them to find the correct spelling or even ask for the correct spelling. When I was their age if I wrote mouce (I think that was my most common mistake) it would have a small pencil mark underneath, with the correctly spelt word! I think that I preferred the second method, although maybe keeping them in from the playground was a bit harsh.

I don't know. I haven't been in a school since I left that school - and these days I don't think I'd dare. Not as a teacher at any rate.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Your proposal sounds entirely reasonable and it's what I would do.

I've got a bit of a similar problem when my students are starting to write their own texts in English. There's so much they want to say and of course, they will end up with sentences that are mostly gibberish, so the trick is to get them to write a first draft (preferably in pencil) which is then corrected and then they can write a proper version. The ones who are not lazy actually enjoy getting a perfect text, but sometimes it's rather discouraging for them if every sentence they write has some minor or major issues.

[distractogirl.livejournal.com]

I used to have that when I was learning Spanish (I have a GCSE, but I couldn't speak a sentence and be sure that it's gramatically correct), mostly my paragraphs would come back with large scrawls in red pen and parts reproduced how they should be. It was slightly discouraging, and probably part of the reason I never enjoyed my Spanish lessons, but looking back I think it probably was the best way of handling it. I think I was just letting it discourage me because I was reasonably lazy and therefore wanted to be discouraged (possibly because I was acting out, now I wish I could go back and learn all the things I was reluctant about).

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

It's what I do with the kids. From second grade on up I let them write whatever they want and correct it in blue pen when they've made mistakes. Sometimes I just write a better way of saying it underneath they're sentences. I don't know if they learn something that way, but at least they don't have pages filled with spelling mistakes.

[distractogirl.livejournal.com]

I think it's the best way. Correction without the stigma of "You got this wrong do it again" and I think it's also helpful to the teacher, since they can see how much the student actually has learnt by comparing the words that they've got wrong, if they're consistently getting the same ones wrong then maybe they need more one to one help, but you would get a better idea of how their learning.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I believe that every generation of teachers, parents and authority figures bemoans a lack of language skills - it's like those complaints about 'young people nowadays' that seem to be so now, but then turn out to be from Roman times.

That said, this decline is indeed real, but I often think that it gets fudged with other issues.

This is true and I think that globalization adds a lot to the problem indeed...and mass media and mass culture tend to level down the language skills and to reduce vocabulary, probably in any languages.

What worries me the most is the obvious decline when it comes to the supposed elite or rather the group of people that is considered an elite nowadays which is mostly the powerful ones who get the most media coverage, who make the most money, who rule the world in one way or another (leaders like Bush or Sarkozy, CEOs of the biggest firms, tv icons or celebrities, you name it!). If those are the new models (and they are since they are successful), there's no reason for the youngsters to make effort indeed. So no the standard aren't that highest anymore.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

The "elite" isn't allowed to be a genuine elite anymore. Elitist is a swear-word nowadays. Consider this: We are in fact an elite, because we are discussing this online. We are the happy few relishing in books and language.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Yeah I know, and the powerful ones probably rather see themselves as "winners"(and therefore us as "losers")than as an elite.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I actually believe it's not entirely true that only a small minority likes to discuss these things and enjoys reading and language. I'm pretty sure that if you ask someone on the street about whether language is changing, you'll get a rant how no one knows how to speak and write properly anymore and that standards are slipping and so on. It's sort of a cultural meme.

On the other hand, nowadays 'uneducated' people are shown on television in the daily chat-shows and of course, they make a show of themselves and then the people who are slightly more educated snigger at them. I can see it in my students - they will laugh at the kids who know less than they do and who are less articulate.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying - it seems like people don't value language skills as much anymore, but actually - I'm playing devil's advocate here - maybe there's also something positive about this?

In the past, it meant that only a very educated person could be of importance and most of the time educated meant rich and/or aristocratic. Of course, there were some self-taught people who through intelligence and sheer effort managed to acquire these skills, too.

Nowadays, we've got social mobility and even someone from a humble background can become a superstar. Also, the so-called 'elite' tries to show that they're actually not that removed from ordinary folks and speak like everyone else instead of using difficult words and thus confusing the unwashed masses and keeping them in the dark about what's going on.

The sad fact behind all this (and I'm only partly dropping the devil's advocate stance now) is that education is losing its value and meaning. Instead of making the education that was once the privilege of an elite available to everyone, the levels of education are scaled down and standards are lowered. In Germany, the conservatives will have you believe that's all the left's fault for trying to give everyone equal opportunities.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Also, the so-called 'elite' tries to show that they're actually not that removed from ordinary folks and speak like everyone else instead of using difficult words and thus confusing the unwashed masses and keeping them in the dark about what's going on.

I agree, it's partly a strategy and it's quite populist but it is also a symptom of the decline. They're still much richer and more educated than the masses but they just don't care about being rigorous, knowing their History and Geography or using accurate language.
Educated people in France(for instance coming from our Grandes Ecoles like Normale Sup, HEC or ENA)used to value education and language but it's slipping away.

We're living in a world ruled, on various scales, by an economic oligarchy but this is really the end of the aristocracy in the Greek meaning of the word. BTW I think it's something that Stephen Frears showed very well in The Queen.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

maybe there was a time when regular people wrote letters regularly and maybe people then were much better at it, but I'm sure that even then there were well-educated folks who complained about the rough language of the common people.

I've always suspected that it's not that standards are slipping, but that educated people now have greater exposure to the less well educated, thanks to mass communication and the Internet...

50 years ago, 75% of the population (in the UK, anyway) would have left school in their early teens to go and work in a factory. They'd probably be able to write their names and make sense of the sports page in their newspaper, but if you asked them to write a letter they'd struggle over it for hours... unless they went to a more literate friend to help them with it. Meanwhile, the gilded élite were sprinkling their monographs and correspondence with erudite quotations and polished turns of phrase, and never coming into contact with the semi-literate masses.

But when we form our own picture of what the past was like, do we look to the 75% who struggled with basic literacy, or the well-educated 25%? Well, which group would have left the most detailed written records of their way of life? :-)

Now though - perfectly creditably - we think it's wrong to abandon the bulk of the population to ignorance. Teachers face classes full of 14- and 15-year olds who would have been out at work 50 years earlier. And when you put your musings on the world situation on the Net instead of discussing them in the smoking room of your club, you get replies not only from fellow-members of your society, but from everybody in the world who can afford a computer and Internet connection...

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

The problem is that those 75% (less actually if we consider an age group) don't leave school in their early teens now, they finish higschool and even succeed in their final exam when there's one but most of them can't write a letter in proper language and still struggle when they have to write a letter...Actually they struggle less and less because they think that using a proper language (not only without spelling mistakes but with a correct grammar and syntax)doesn't matter. More and more of them get a so-called higher education. Some of them even become teachers or President...