Should spelling and grammar count?

I'm spending my weekend marking exams and papers. As always, I have to decide, "Should I take off marks for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors?"

Grades are a measure of a student's abilities, skills, and knowledge. They are used by admission committees in deciding a student's potential for graduate work (a master's degree, or law school), and by employers, who may use grades in making hiring decisions.

So the question, "Should spelling and grammar count?" is asking what skills an economics professor should be measuring.

Should a professor attempt to measure a student's knowledge of economics, for example, his or her ability to explain and apply the first theorem of welfare economics? If the purpose of undergraduate grades is to assess a student's potential for graduate work in economics, say, then knowledge of economics should be the key grading criterion. Spelling and grammar shouldn't matter, except in so far as an extremely poor command over English will make it difficult for a student to present a coherent explanation of economic phenomena.

Or should a professor attempt to measure whether or not a student has the skills demanded by employers? Employers want to hire people who are capable of writing a business letter or sending an error-free email. From an employer's point of view, spelling and grammar do count.

As a practical matter, I usually don't take off marks for spelling and grammar, as long as it seems that the student has made some kind of an effort. First, taking off marks for spelling and grammar would disadvantage students who do not speak English as their first language, and this seems almost like a form of discrimination (though the spelling and grammar of native speakers is far from perfect).

Second, it seems unfair to take off marks for spelling and grammar when I am not teaching the students anything about spelling and grammar. Grades, it seems to me, should assess what the student has learned in the course, not what the student knew to begin with. (Carleton, like other universities, does have a writing tutorial centre, but the centre tends to focus on university-level writing skills, for example, how to structure an essay. English as a Second Language courses are offered at the university, but that isn't much help the day before a major paper is due.)

So, other than expecting essays to be spell-checked and in paragraph form, I generally don't subtract grades for grammatical errors.

But I have no idea if this is general practice, or indeed if this is the right thing to be doing.

And now, back to marking...

Comments

[Moebius Stripper]

As far as I know, no one in my (math) dept docks marks for spelling/grammar, but I teach at a polytechnic where part of our mandate is to produce job-ready workers, so your comment about about proper spelling and grammar signalling employability is giving me pause. Fortunately, where I teach, students in most programs are required to take at least one class in business communication, and I assume their teachers for those courses deduct spelling and grammar marks with impunity.

I do find myself tempted, however, to dock marks for poor spelling and grammar in situations where they've seen plenty of examples in my class of how to express certain ideas properly. For instance, my statistics students' notes are filled with properly-spelled, grammatically-correct sentences interpreting confidence intervals and results of hypothesis tests. They should know how to get those right. Usually I correct the mistakes, and write that I am not taking off any marks this time, but might on the next test.

Finally - I have a large number of non-native English speakers, some of whom really struggle with the language, in my class, and I am consistently impressed by how well they manage to keep up with advanced material in a language that they are not comfortable with. Like you, I am loathe to punish them for their spelling and grammar - which is often not much worse than that of their anglophone peers. But I felt I had to do something a few weeks ago when three keen Asian students, all new to this country, handed in their homework with the word "Assignment" abbreviated with its first three letters.

[Gord Cleveland]

I mark for coherence of explanation, rather than spelling or grammar. The two are often intertwined, but I try to separate them and mark only on coherence (which often requires a careful reading of answers with poor grammar). But when I have essays to mark (in my course on the Economics of the Family), I have a slightly different practice. When I mark the essays, I correct extensively in red pen all the spelling and grammar mistakes, and make comments about my difficulty understanding points that students are trying to make. It looks like I am marking for spelling and grammar; in fact, I adopt the same scheme as for exams - only coherence of explanation affects the mark. But I give students a very clear indication if their spelling and grammar is poor, and they probably believe that it negatively affects their marks. I emphasize that I should be seeing their second or third version of the paper, rather than a first effort. I think it does students no favours to simply ignore poor grammar and spelling, although I agree with Frances that it is unfair to mark spelling and grammar on its own.

[Jacques René Giguère]

In my Cegep we are supposed to substract up to 10% for language problems.
My position is that
a) orthograghy is a modern invention that you couldn't spot in oral language, so it has no business being insisted upon...
b) vocabulary is important. The guy goes to the hospital to be circumsised but ask to be castrated...
c) nobody except aphasics and foreign speakers makes a grammar error. What we see are errors in logic,semantic or pragmatic. Not grammar. Most people in the education racket, especially at the upper level ( Dept of Education and so on) have any knowledge of linguistics...

[Brett]

Should we take off grades for people with bad breath, for those with unkempt hair and clothes, for those who wear white sports socks with dark pants and shoes, or for those who have a wet-fish handshake, all of which may be evaluated by employers when making hiring decisions?

[Brett]

@ Jacques René Giguère: point c) is a parody of modern linguistics. See Geoff Pullum on this point.

[Frances Woolley]

Jacques René: "nobody except aphasics and foreign speakers makes a grammar error."

Perhaps in French, but this English native speaker makes grammatical errors all the time. There's loads of them here on this blog.

I agree with you that grammatical errors can reflect lack of understanding or comprehension, or logical and other errors, rather than lack of knowledge of grammar. For example, suppose someone defines Pareto efficiency as "It is not possible to make one person better off without making someone else worst off" (the correct answer would be "....worse off"). Is that a grammatical error, or does it reflect a lack of understanding of the underlying concepts? Hard to know.

Gord "I mark for coherence of explanation, rather than spelling or grammar."

I try to do the same, but I wonder if we're doing what's best for our students. Being able to write well will increase their chances of getting a job, and getting ahead once they're in a job. (As a former student once said to me, "My MA in Economics got me my job, but my undergraduate degree in Philosophy got me my promotions" - his point was the importance of being able to write.) People respond to incentives, so if we grade for spelling and grammar, people will work on improving their English-language skills.

So perhaps we should grade on spelling and grammar, as a way of incentivizing people to do what is in their long-term self-interest?

Moebius: "homework with the word "Assignment" abbreviated with its first three letters"

Speakers of some languages have a lot of problems with "he" and "she" - unfortunately a 100% guaranteed way of talking yourself out of a job is referring to a male interviewer as "she" or a female interviewer as "Sir" or "he." That's one I mention to people sometimes - but if you run around correcting people's grammar all the time then they end up afraid to say anything, and that's the worst possible outcome.

[Neil]

I'm of the opinion that if someone's spelling and grammar interfere with their ability to communicate their ideas, then they should lose marks. If you find yourself rereading a sentence several times to understand what they're trying to say, or if you have to assign one of several possible meanings to an ambiguous sentence, those are the kinds of errors that continue to a problem outside of an English class. If someone used a semi-colon where they should have used a comma, then no, I don't think that has bearing on an economics class.

[Frances Woolley]

Brett - "Should we take off grades for people with bad breath, for those with unkempt hair and clothes,"

Touche! Have you seen the prof or hobo quiz?

There's a difference between grading on what is within a student's control (understanding course material) and what is outside a student's control (good looks). There's also a difference on grading on what is arguably within the domain of university instruction (how to communicate effectively) and what is not (personal grooming).

[rp1]

If you notice it, it counts.

[Min]

Jacques Rene Giguere: "nobody except aphasics and foreign speakers makes a grammar error. What we see are errors in logic,semantic or pragmatic. Not grammar."

Well, in English they do.

Example 1: It's me.

Correct grammar: It's I.

But in French, IIUC, "Ç'est moi," is grammatically correct. It was explained to me that French has strong forms, of which "moi" is one. Arguably, English has strong forms, as well. But not according to official grammar.

Example 2: Johnny, he's a looker.

Correct grammar: Johnny's a looker.

Again, the double subject is grammatical in other languages.

Example 3: He began to strenuously object.

Correct grammar: He began to object strenuously.

Do Germans split infinitives?

Example 4: I shot me a squirrel.

Correct grammar: I shot a squirrel.

The Ethical Dative is grammatical in Latin.

----

Also, as someone has pointed out, standard orthography is relatively modern. The author of "Le Morte D'Arthur" spells his name Mallory in one place, Maleore in another. :)

[Min]

Example 5: " if someone's spelling and grammar interfere with their ability to communicate their ideas,"

Correct grammar: "interfere with his or her ability to communicate his or her ideas".

"Someone" is singular, "their" is plural.

{Sorry.}

[Jacques René Giguère]

Frances: you may be off-topic and commit a fault of pragmatic. You may have confused thought (never seen that to date but I have not read all your documents...) and commit a fault of logic. You may use the wrong word and commit a fault of vocabulary. You might mispell a word. I doubt you ever wrote sentences without the proper structure. I personnaly sometimes mess my italian with my spanish, my german and innu are shaky but I never misconstruct a sentence in either french and english, my two natives languages.
Brett: the guidelines we receive from the Dept of Education or the "pedagocical couselors" are a parody of modern linguistics...among other subjects.

[Min]

Frances Woolley: "unfortunately a 100% guaranteed way of talking yourself out of a job is referring to a male interviewer as "she" or a female interviewer as "Sir" or "he."

What a wonderful way to screen prospective employers! ;)

Frances Woolley: "but if you run around correcting people's grammar all the time then they end up afraid to say anything, and that's the worst possible outcome."

Indeed. That was something I learned teaching English conversation abroad.

[Min]

I tried to stay out of this. {sigh}

Frances Woolley: "People respond to incentives, so if we grade for spelling and grammar, people will work on improving their English-language skills.

"So perhaps we should grade on spelling and grammar, as a way of incentivizing people to do what is in their long-term self-interest?"

As you know, motivation is not a simple thing. When I began teaching English conversation, I thought that I knew something about shaping behavior. My students were initially shy. So my first task was to get them to speak. So I rewarded anything they said, grammatical or not. True, if I did not understand them, I asked questions. But my purpose was to understand, not to point out error. Within a few weeks I had them talking. Then I began to offer corrections. They clammed up. I wend back to rewarding everything. In the end I was long on reward, short on correction.

If the only help that your students get in terms of language is for their spelling and grammatical errors to count against their grades, how much help are they getting? It might even be counterproductive.

[Eric Crampton]

I always tell my students that they're graded not just on providing a correct and insightful answer, but also in presenting that answer for others' consumption. In practice, this means that beautifully written answers get a half point bump up and badly written ones get a half point bump down or more; I'm more lenient where English is a second language.

[Lorenzo from Oz]

Language is a tool of communication, like maths. You mark down poor use of basic elements of language (spelling, grammar) because it degrades communication. Maths is also a tool of logic. But part of the point of good grammar and clear spelling is to reveal clearly the logic of your argument/analysis. A teacher is doing students no favours by implying there is some important realm of communication where spelling and grammar do not "count".

[Jacques René Giguère]

What happens when we try to correct for language, esepcially using guidelines from above.
A student write : les taxe. I am supposed to dock him point for not putting a final s indicating plural. But that s is silent. If the student had made an oral presentation, it would have been ok.And how do I know the s should have been there? Because of the article! In french (unlike english) plural is marked by the article not vocalized final s.
According to my " linguistic counsellor" I am not supposed to presume the student intended to write "la taxe" and the mistake is in using the wrong article. In that case the student is probably aphasic because no native speaker of a language makes that kind of mistake. See Pinker
The language instinct
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_21?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+language+instinct+steven+pinker&sprefix=the+language+instinct

[Stephen Gordon]

I don't deduct marks for grammar and spelling for the obvious reasons. OTOH, sometimes I'm tempted, on the grounds that if *I* can see the mistake, there's something very, very wrong.

[Frances Woolley]

Min: "If the only help that your students get in terms of language is for their spelling and grammatical errors to count against their grades, how much help are they getting? It might even be counterproductive."

True, especially if people find the prospect of producing a grammatically correct five- or ten-page paper so overwhelming that they just outsource the whole project.

By the way, the use of "their" as in "the student lost their book" has a long and well-established history.

Brett - "Should we take off grades for people with bad breath, for those with unkempt hair and clothes,"

Economics departments care very much about the placement of their PhD students, as that is taken as a signal of the quality of a department. PhD students on the job market aren't forced to go through some kind of fashion make-over, but often advice on clothing and etiquette is on offer if students want it. And it can be useful. E.g. academic job interviews often involve dinner + wine - so the challenge is "how do I drink enough to seem polite and sociable but not so much that I get drunk?" Here experienced drinkers can offer sound advice e.g. one sip of water for every sip of wine, put your hand over your glass to avoid refills, etc.

Jacques Rene: "A student write : les taxe. I am supposed to dock him point for not putting a final s indicating plural."

There's quite a bit of talk right now in Ontario about creating teaching-oriented universities and integrating colleges and universities. I have serious reservations about it precisely because I fear having to mark the way some bureaucrat who knows next-to-nothing about economics says I should mark.

[Min]

Frances Woolley: "By the way, the use of "their" as in "the student lost their book" has a long and well-established history."

Oh, sure. Every "error" I mentioned has a long history. :) Jacques is right that people hardly ever make grammatical mistakes **in their own dialects**.

[Min]

BTW, don't students use word processors these days?

[Determinant]

Oh dear Min, "It's I"?

There's a debate.

I is the subject form, nominative case, me is the object, accusative/dative case.

It's me is accusative grammatically, you are not the subject but the object. Therefore me is correct.

"It's I" means you can't decline properly. Subject, verb, subject? Object, verb, subject? In English? Never.

[Frances Woolley]

Min: "BTW, don't students use word processors these days?"

A spell-check doesn't catch their/there/they're. It's/its. Etc.

Grammar checks help fix minor problems. E.g. a French grammar check is really helpful if you can't remember whether a noun is masculine or feminine, because it will automatically force agreement. I find grammar checks do catch some of my typos.

But when I asked my students about this, they told me they don't find Word's grammar checker particularly helpful - it's one thing to underline a sentence in green, it's another thing to work out how that sentence can be fixed.

[Stephen Gordon]

Determinant: "It is I" is correct. No debate.

[Jon]

Both it is I and it is me are correct, but the former is rapidly fading.

The countervailing rule that Determinant forgets is that the subject form of a pronoun follows a linking verb.

Ah, English, thou art not so structured as Latin.

Francis: I mark grammar errors but certainly do not deduct points!

[Donald A. Coffin]

My position is that I do not take spelling/grammar/sentence structure into account on exams on which students have a limited amount of time to write their answers (e.g., in-class). I focus on the economics; if their technical writing skills get in the way of their ability to explain their answers, then the hit is to their exposition of the economics.

On the other hand, on papers (and other materials) prepared outside of class, I do take into account their writing. I tell them to think about what they are doing as if they were cmmunicating with (for example) their employers. Clarity of writing, absence of errors, even the "messiness" of the physical presentation all matter. (And with word processing programs to flag spelling and grammar issues, they do have cues that come not from me.) Opportunities for them to re-write also matter; I am even pickier in those situations.

[Donald A. Coffin]

10 bonus points for identifying my error in the previous comment.

[Donald A. Coffin]

Incidentally, I think it is not only fair, but essential, to address technical writing errors in graduate (especially doctoral) classes. Many, if not most, of those students will be writing for publication at some time in their careers. They'd better get used to having their writing scrutinized. One of the least pleasant tasks one can have as an editor is to inform someone who has submitted a paper for review that it is too badly written to be acceptable, or even to be sent out for review.

[Min]

Determinant: "Oh dear Min, "It's I"?

"There's a debate."

Stephen Gordon: "It is I" is correct. No debate."

There should not be a debate. It is perfectly fine for a predicate pronoun to take the accusative case in informal English. (And the contraction indicates informality.)

In a critique of "Elements of Style" ( http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/ETfinalProof.pdf ), linguistics prof and co-author of "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language", Geoffrey Pullum, takes White to task for recommending this sentence as correct: "The culprit, it turned out, was he." He calls it "grotesquely pompous" and cites usage of the accusative as early as 1909.

Now, academic writing tends to be formal. "It's me," can be criticized for informality in that context.

[Min]

Frances Woolley: "A spell-check doesn't catch their/there/they're. It's/its. Etc."

No, it doesn't. But I would generally take "equalibrum" as evidence of carelessness or haste, if a word processor was used.

Grammar checkers suck, IMO.

[Min]

Donald A. Coffin: "Incidentally, I think it is not only fair, but essential, to address technical writing errors in graduate (especially doctoral) classes. Many, if not most, of those students will be writing for publication at some time in their careers."

Indeed. And there are style guides for different professions. I think that graduate students' papers should be written as though for publication.

At the undergraduate level, though, I think that things are different. As I said before, grammatical errors in one's own dialect are rare. To correct a person for using their own dialect is an insult, unless you are teaching them a different dialect.

[Frances Woolley]

Just to be clear - I'm not spending time agonizing about whether to take off grades for split infinitives. I'm happy if they want to boldly split infinitives no man has split before. The English language is constantly evolving and changing.

For example, the original Star Trek started with the phrase:

"...to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Star Trek Next Generation starts with:

"....to boldly go where no one has gone before."

That tells you everything you need to know about the evolution of the English language.

The dilemma is this: some students would have better job market prospects if they were able to improve their writing skills. Should I force them to take steps to improve their writing skills by giving grades for spelling and grammar, even though spelling and grammar have little to do with the substance of economics?

[Patrick]

FWIW, the first criteria we use for eliminating job applicants is spelling and grammar. Especially dropped articles (it's a cheap way of eliminating ESL without risking accusations of racism). I'm not proud of it, but it seems to be pretty standard practice.

I am certainly guilty of my fair share of spelling & grammar errors (I goof their/there with alarming frequency). Glass house, meet stones. Or is it Angry Birds?

[Frances Woolley]

Donald: "cmmunicating with (for example) their employers. Clarity of writing, absence of errors, even the "messiness" of the physical presentation all matter. (And with word processing programs to flag spelling and grammar issues, they do have cues that come not from me.) Opportunities for them to re-write also matter; I am even pickier in those situations."

I can change cmmunicating to communicating if you wish. Has the rule "never start a sentence with "And"" disappeared from the language? (I think so.) I will make no remarks about your decision to use the semi-colon; they would be better left unsaid.

[Rob Hailman]

My professors generally had a rule for exams, which I think worked well:

If you made a spelling or grammatical error in a word or phrase that was specifically part of the course material, ("Keynesian", "Pareto", "monopsony", etc) you had marks deducted. Otherwise, the prof might point it out but it wouldn't affect your grade.

For regular coursework, the same general rule still applied but with a bit more leniency. It makes sense that the standard should be a bit higher when the student has the luxury of preparing the work on their own time, presumably with the benefit of a word processor and dictionary.

[Linda]

I agonize over this one - so thanks, Frances, for providing the forum for comments! I am amazed by spelling errors on essays: if students have access to spell checkers, some studiously ignore them. I deduct marks for spelling and grammar errors on essays. I warn students at the beginning of classes that there are some spelling errors for which they will lose marks on the final, because I see them as evidence of conceptual errors: compliments, adverse/averse confusion (for the info&incentives class). My alltime favourite confused student was the one who asked if I wanted the English or the American spelling of profit - I think "prophet" was meant to be the English spelling. So far as I could tell, this student's first language was English. I still wonder what he read/how he interpreted much of what he read.
Beyond essays and tests, who is responsible for teaching students how to write emails?

[jad]

I think it's completely unacceptable that students who are bright enough to get into university don't appear to leave school with adequate communication skills. Perhaps more attention should be paid to basic writing skills at the HS level so that the ability to communicate clearly becomes automatic. Or perhaps university entrance should be predicated on some kind of writing tes, even for foreigh students.

The problem in the real world is that it doesn't matter how brilliant you are, if you cannot communicate your ideas, people will not listen to you.

[Frances Woolley]

Linda: "Beyond essays and tests, who is responsible for teaching students how to write emails?"

Hey prof!

R u?

Seriously - I think this is one reason why biz skool is so popular - these kinds of skills are more likely to be taught in business schools than in econ departments. My pet peeve is when someone asks me to do them a favour e.g. write a letter of reference but can't be bothered to write a personal email.

jad: "students who are bright enough to get into university don't appear to leave school with adequate communication skills"

I don't know if you're Canadian or not. In Canadian economics departments, a large proportion of our undergrads - including many of our best undergrads - are first generation Canadians, who speak English as a second, third or fourth language.

It's not clear how we can provide the best possible service to those students: refuse them admission because their English is less than perfect? Accept them as they are, try to teach them some economics, but say "teaching English is not our job"? Or force them to improve their English skills, because we believe it is in their own long-term best interests - even if doing so delays their graduation or is costly to them in other ways?

[jesse]

Here's a perspective from the private sector: CEO of my company once said about grammatical mistakes on resumes: "If you can't get that one thing right, I don't want to know what you'd do if we hired you."

Spelling matters, it's like hitting an off note at a piano recital. Do your job. Do it well. No quarter. FWIW.

[Frances Woolley]

Jesse - "CEO of my company once said about grammatical mistakes on resumes: "If you can't get that one thing right, I don't want to know what you'd do if we hired you."

As an aside, one of the issues with Phil Oreopoulos's oft-cited study on the effect of names on the probability of being hired is that the resumes he used in the study have grammatical errors.

Hiring is a matter of reducing a pile of 300 resumes to a pile of 3 resumes using sensible, easy-to-apply rules, and then interviewing the remaining job candidates. So people do things like:

Eliminate everyone without a university degree.
Eliminate everyone without Canadian job experience.
Eliminate everyone with unexplained gaps in their resume.
Eliminate everyone who makes a spelling mistake.

[Joel Wood]

IMO grammar and spelling should be graded on essays and written assignments but not on exams (bc of time constraints). There are probably skills that an econ department wants their graduates to have obtained or improved upon when awarded a major in Econ; writing clearly and correctly is probably one of these skills. No individual course should attempt to provide this, but i am sure curriculum mapping can help provide it. As an econ undergrad and grad student I greatly appreciated feedback (either graded or ungraded) on my writing. A potential way to provide feedback in a less time-consuming way than explicitly grading or correcting grammatical mistakes is to make a list of common issues that you notice while reading assignments/papers and then presenting them to the class along with examples of appropriate solutions to the mistakes.

[Andrew F]

Min:

"Example 5: " if someone's spelling and grammar interfere with their ability to communicate their ideas,"

Correct grammar: "interfere with his or her ability to communicate his or her ideas".

"Someone" is singular, "their" is plural.

{Sorry.}
"

This is one thing I strongly dislike about English. It is unacceptable to use he in the place of 'he or she' as one might in French (some try to get away with using she or alternating). I like their as it is forcing its way into English as a gender neutral third person singular. I try using 'one' sometimes, but it usually earns me strange looks. It's really frustrating. And prose littered with 'he or she' is really ugly.

[tyronen]

When I was in grade 3, I remember the teacher patiently explaining to the class the difference between "there", "their", and "they're". The grade 4 teacher did the same. And grade 5, 6, 7....all the way up to university.

And *still* students never seemed to get it right. There's a literacy test to graduate from Ontario high schools today, and I doubt it has changed anything.

[Frances Woolley]

Andrew F: "This is one thing I strongly dislike about English."

And so there is a long tradition dating back to Thackery and others of using their as a gender-neutral singular-possessive. The history is really fascinating, perhaps I'll try to do a post on it sometime.

tyronen: "When I was in grade 3, I remember the teacher patiently explaining to the class the difference between "there", "their", and "they're". The grade 4 teacher did the same. And grade 5, 6, 7....all the way up to university.

And *still* students never seemed to get it right."

This is precisely what I've observed also. The question is: are people simply unable to remember their/they're/there? Or do people just not care enough to learn the distinction because they think no one will ever delete their email unread or toss aside their resume for the incorrect use of they're/their/there (how wrong they would be).

Or is it that the distinction is never properly taught? Back in the day there were loads of stupid little rhymes to remember these rules e.g. "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and says its own name." I don't know one for they're/their/there but here are three simple rules:
they're=they are
there is spelled just like here, so we have here and there.
their has an i in it, just like his does.

[Bob Smith]

Frances,

I think universities have to evaluate, or at least comment upon, grammar and spelling. It's fair to say that this isn't something that universities should have to do, because a high school graduate shouldbe more or less literate. But then universities also shouldn't have to offer remedial english and mathmatics courses (two of the most popular couses at American universities). Given that the public education system has abdicated its responsibility to produce reasonably educated students (although they do a damned good job of promoting self-esteem - I guess that's easy if you don't correct mistakes), someone has to take up the slack.

As you note, grammar and spelling aren't just cosmetic exercises, they go to core of a person's writing. My student who wrote that "the CPR is essential to the economic development of Canada" was saying something very different from what she was trying to say, namely that "the CPR WAS essential to the economic development of Canada", because no one ever taught her that, generally, if you're writing a history essay, you write it in the past tense. Indeed, in that case, the sentence she wrote was perfectly coherent, at least gramatically, it was just factually wrong! That's an extreme example (although a real one), but it highlights the point that grammar and spelling matter.

Moreover, as you note, we aren't doing students any favours by ignoring grammar and spelling. It's all well and good to say that grammar and spelling don't matter, it's the ideas that count, but out in the real world, grammar and spelling matter. People aren't going to read emails, letters, memoranda, job applications, proposals, what have you, that are filled with gramatical mistakes. Good ideas aren't worth anything if no one can decypher them. Every law firm I've ever worked at had a standard policy of ignoring (or shredding) cover letters from job applicants containing spelling and gramatical errors in (and I know it is not an uncommon practice in other industries). What good does it do universities to impart all sorts of valuable knowledge on students, without ensuring that they have the basic skills to use it effectively.

Furthermore, I take your point about students whose first language isn't English, but as I see it, those are the students who have the most to gain from an emphasis on spelling and grammar (and who lose the most because of the failure to do so). I don't have any illusions about my own grasp of the rules of english grammar, but my parents were both university educated WASPs (who were taught proper grammar as children), so even without a solid grasp of the formal rules of english grammar, my instinct as to what "sounds" right it usually sound. But my friends in high school (in Toronto), or my students at university (also in Toronto), didn't have that advantage. Their parents typically didn't speak the Queen's english (if they spoke english at all), so how on earth were they supposed to figure out what "sounds" right if their public schools didn't teach them? Unfortunately, at least in the past, the Toronto Board of Education had a policy banning the teaching of english grammar - a policy which, ironically, benefited (at least in relative terms) native english speakers at myself, at the expense of my immigrant (or first generation Canadian) friends, who could really have benefited from such training. How's this for a research topic, the link between the growing wage gap between immigrants (and their children) and "native" Canadians and the decision of public schools to stop teaching english grammar? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see a strong causal relationship between the two.

In terms of a remedy, Jad may be on to something. If real english proficiency were a pre-requisite for university enrolment (for all students - because, let's face it, many of the worst illiterates in our midst are native-born english speakers), maybe our public schools would take it seriously. I'm dead serious. If a single large university, say UofT or York, were to say "guys, in 4-years time, we're going to mandate that all applicants take, and pass, the TOEFL test (or something similar) and if your graduates can't cut it, they'll probably be coming back to you for an explanation as to why you failed to teach them english in 12 years of education", you had better believe that the Ontario public school system would hop to it to ensure that it produces literate graduates. Moreover, with enough lead time, I'm willing to bet that non-native english speakers wouldn't be disadvantaged by that policy (if anything, improved english proficiency might even help them).

[Bob Smith]

This is precisely what I've observed also. The question is: are people simply unable to remember their/they're/there? Or do people just not care enough to learn the distinction because they think no one will ever delete their email unread or toss aside their resume for the incorrect use of they're/their/there (how wrong they would be).

I suspect it's the latter. In university, that's the type of silly typo that I regularly made. Professors routinely commented upon them, and I routinely ignored those comments. Out in the real world, though, when partners started commenting on similar typos (and handing back marked-up memos or draft emails with instructions to get my s**t together), it's funny how I started paying attention to those sorts of things. Yet another economic law empirically confirmed, people do respond to incentives!

[Min]

Andrew F: "This is one thing I strongly dislike about English. It is unacceptable to use he in the place of 'he or she' as one might in French (some try to get away with using she or alternating). I like their as it is forcing its way into English as a gender neutral third person singular."

The use of "they" forms as singular has a long history. Not as long as using "you" forms as singular -- Remember "thou"? --, but long, as Frances Woolley points out. It really is grammatical.

However, I know of at least one professional journal that considers it ungrammatical. Therein lies the problem.

[Min]

tyronen: "When I was in grade 3, I remember the teacher patiently explaining to the class the difference between "there", "their", and "they're". The grade 4 teacher did the same. And grade 5, 6, 7....all the way up to university.

"And *still* students never seemed to get it right."

Frances Woolley: "This is precisely what I've observed also. The question is: are people simply unable to remember their/they're/there? Or do people just not care enough to learn the distinction because they think no one will ever delete their email unread or toss aside their resume for the incorrect use of they're/their/there (how wrong they would be).

"Or is it that the distinction is never properly taught?"

Without denying the other reasons, I suspect that it was never properly taught. I observed the same kind of thing in school. Our school prided itself on teaching English grammar. At least, it put a high priority on it. Half of each year's English class was devoted to it, for the seventh through the twelfth grade (!). Perhaps surprisingly, the material was the same every year. By ninth grade I noticed that everybody made the same mistakes year after year and got the same grades. In short, most of those semesters were pedagogically a waste of time. Except to convince certain students that they were dummies, if you consider that a good pedagogical outcome.

Of course, certain students had a big advantage, because they learned standard English at home. They spoke it with their family, their friends and neighbors. The errors of other kids reflected how their parents, friends, and neighbors spoke. As a kid, I knew all of that, but I thought that the other kids' parents were simply ignorant. It was only later that I came to realize that they spoke a different dialect of English.

What does it do to a child to tell her that the speech of her family and friends is wrong, that it indicates ignorance or stupidity? Wouldn't you reject that implication? Wouldn't you resist such teaching?

I'll skip the rant about the injustice and pettiness of standard English. Every civilization that I know of has a standard dialect that reflects a history of conquest, domination, or exploitation. Language is used to divide people into in-group and out-group, to keep people in their place. That happens. Let us accept that fact.

So we wish for our students to learn the standard dialect. Traditional teaching methods obviously have not worked very well. What to do? Perhaps teaching the standard dialect as a second language would work better. That field has developed a lot in recent decades. Also, by framing the teaching in that way, you avoid shaming the student for how she speaks. That change in itself may be worth a lot. :)

What does this have to do with marking undergraduate economics papers? Not too much, except to say that the problem is a difficult one, and if the student has not learned the standard dialect by college, more has to be done than having an economics prof offer a few comments or take off points for non-standard grammar.

[Determinant]

"The culprit, it turned out, was he." He calls it "grotesquely pompous" and cites usage of the accusative as early as 1909."

Linking verb? Nope, just plain illogical. "It is I" or "It was he" throws the sentence into the passive rather than the active voice. The verb here is not a weak linking or auxiliary verb, it is a strong, active act of identification. Again, it's a case of rulemakers ignoring the role of voice and declension.

Speaking of rules, splitting infinitives has been debated since forever and there is the famous case of the Oxford Comma (here, there, and everywhere).

Speaking of ESL and University, my brother had an Undergrad TA job in his final year as a Commerce student. He was a Teaching Assistant in an Accounting Course for MBA students, most of whom were ESL students. His speech is Quite Proper as we are both the sons of clergy and grandsons of clergy and school teachers. His course professor received a complain petition against my brother which stated that his English was "Too Perfect" and could not be understood by the ESL students. They wanted him to be more ESL-like. The prof laughed and threw away the petition. He told the students that my brother was exactly what they should expect in the corporate world and they should get used to it.

We both had a good laugh about it.

[Bob Smith]

Min: "What does it do to a child to tell her that the speech of her family and friends is wrong, that it indicates ignorance or stupidity? Wouldn't you reject that implication? Wouldn't you resist such teaching?"

By the same token, what does it do to the child to tell them that, hey, whatever you do it's all good? Even if they are incomprehensible to members of a different language group? Sure, that may well reinforce their self-esteem, at the expense of isolating them from the broader society. Granted, deeming the english of the home counties to be "standard english" (as opposed to the english of Northumbria, or Australia, or Newfoundland, or Missisipi) is arbitrary, but given that arbitrary distinction, far from dividing groups, teaching standard english provides a level playing field for all english speakers. That doesn't mean that you dismiss dialects as "ignorant" or "stupid", it also doesn't mean that you embrace such dialects at the expense of a common language. Indeed, traditionally the great virtue of the public education system was that it provided all Canadians (including, and especially, people whose first languge was not English, or French in Quebec) a core set of tools to allow them to succeed in the society in which they live.

In any event, in so far as the concern relates to written english (and the ability of a student to put together a more or less coherent email to a potential employer), rather than speech, concerns about dialect take on less significance. After all, the great virtue of a written language is that it can be understood by people who speak otherwise mutually incomprehensible dialects of the same language. That's why you and I can read Adam Smith or Charles Darwin or Tennessee Williams, despite being separated by time, space and culture, without too much trouble.

Finally, I wouldn't say that traditional teaching methods obviously haven't worked. Quite the contrary, the traditional teaching methods worked fine. The problem is that they were abandoned (for reasons that were as much ideological as pedagogical) a generation ago.

[jesse]

"Hiring is a matter of reducing a pile of 300 resumes to a pile of 3 resumes"

More often than not in the SME sector hires are made through internal networks, not through resume paring. Heck if you're a welder I could care less if you can't write at a fifth grade level, let alone speak the language; I would look for getting a good bead going and not smoking too much weed over lunch!

If you're a foreman in charge of reading through contracts, you better understand what a comma, semicolon, colon, m-dash and n-dash are because they tend to be somewhat important. If you're going to be in charge of any sort of leverage at a company grammar tends to be important, even in technical circles oft maligned by pendants for poor spelling.

[Buyer]

You've all probably seen this one --

A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers...

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

[Patrick]

It seems that spelling and grammar could be the least of your worries:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/244748/20111107/cheating-ucsd-pre-med-california-surveys.htm

Oy.

[Bob Smith]

I guess there are two things to take away from that story.

First, it's interesting that students (reportedly, at least) respond to incentives. If they think cheating will be punished, they wouldn't do it. Apart from the obvious suggestion - that UC San Diego should, figuratively, execute the odd cheater "pour encourager les autres" - I wonder if students wouldn't respond the same way if they thought that poor grammar and spelling would be punished.

Second, this suggests that the secret to solving the grammar and spelling crisis amongst university students is not to teach them english grammar and spelling, but rather to ask the english department to give some remedial english lessons at the local essay mill. Sure, it defeats the purpose, but at least it'll make your job easier.

[K]

I write fairly well. Poorly by the standards of skilled writers in the arts, but efficiently and functionally by the standards of the sciences or a professional in a technical field. And I would *never* mistake "there" for "their." But my fingers do. Sometimes, as my mind rushes to the next sentence before I have completed transcription of the previous, a homonym error will appear. It seems I have no conscious awareness of the individual letters or even words as they are typed. For me the mental process appears to be an oral Internal dictation to a mental secretary who, while aware of the rules of English spelling, is apparently ignorant of meaning or grammar. I'd imagine I'm not the only one with this particular faulty writing process.

[lint and crushed wafer souls]

I don't think spelling is too important as long as student eventually corrects it. A subsequent spelling test of wrong words is ideal but docking subsequent paper mispellinertia, works. Grammar on the other hand is very important. It breaks up your thoughts and affects weighting too. It is probably, along with living dictionary, why our language is so superior, at least for business.

[W. Peden]

Ideally, any student attending university should have a strong grasp of the spelling & grammar in their native language. The universities' role in this regard should be limited to assisting non-native speakers; for non-native speakers, the benefits of having their spelling & grammar corrected by highly educated speakers are obvious.

Of course, we don't live in that ideal, since most high schools and elementary schools are atrocious, while the expanding intake of universities means that more and more inadequately taught students are going to university. Perhaps it will get to the point where universities have to expand undergraduate degrees to 5 years for most students, so they can give them a one-year crash course in the basic skills of numeracy & literacy that they should have learnt at high school.

[W. Peden]

"What does it do to a child to tell her that the speech of her family and friends is wrong, that it indicates ignorance or stupidity? Wouldn't you reject that implication? Wouldn't you resist such teaching?"

Nope. I'd say that it's one of the most valuable lessons one can learn at school and the sooner it is learnt, the better.

I've benefited tremendously from being able to speak standard English. A considerable proportion of the people who know me, who aren't native speakers or who are very unfamiliar with my regional accent, wouldn't be able to understand me if I spoke with a strong regional accent. I don't see why my wings should be clipped to protect my feelings.

[tyronen]

A one-year crash course wouldn't do much.

It is not that the public schools don't attempt to teach children spelling and grammar. They do. The problem is that they fail.

English spelling and grammar are a collection of illogical, confusing, and horribly inconsistent rules. The motivation for children to learn them is nearly nonexistent. Before you snark at public school teachers, find a 13-year-old who can't write and isn't particularly interested. Try to teach him (and it is, usually, a 'him') to write. Just try. It's harder than you think.

About the only kids who do learn it successfully are nerd types like me who spent most of their childhoods reading and very little out of doors. It's the exposure to a vast quantity of copy-edited reading material that turns the trick. Most kids simply aren't interested in that and never have been.

In grade 11, my English class was assigned to read Orwell's 1984. Probably a quarter or more of the class literally could not read the book at all. They would look at the words on the page, and it made no more sense to them than had it been written in Latin. Another quarter trudged through, taking as long as ten minutes to read a single page. This was in a small town where all the kids were native English speakers.

On that note, in fact, my experience has been that immigrant students usually have *better* English spelling and grammar than native speakers do. They simply have a lot more motivation to learn English than do native speakers.

[W. Peden]

tyronen,

A year is all it takes. I only had one year in all of high school during which I was actually formally taught English grammar, spelling & vocab. Then again, we also had the benefit of studying French grammar for four years and after a foreign language's grammar English was easy. We were also the Higher class, i.e. the thirty or so pupils who were actually interested and able to handle English studies.

It is true that motivation is important. It is impossible to teach a language to a class that isn't fully committed. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the decline of the learning of foreign languages in Britain (and the near extinction of high school Latin) corresponds well with the decline in corporal punishment & selective education.

If the year was required for further study, I think it would go well. When learning a foreign language was a requisite of studying at university in the UK, people managed just fine.

How did they teach literacy in your town? I.e. phonetics, whole-language etc.?

[Andrew F]

Most of what I know about grammar, I learned in French. Even now, the names of the different verb tenses are French in my mind, like l'impératif or l'imparfait. And my French grammar and spelling as a non-fluent anglophone was better than that of the students from the french immersion elementary school that fed into my english high school. Something is really backwards about not teaching grammar to students in their native language. It makes understanding and learning languages easier when you understand and can conceptualize the mechanics.

[Andrew F]

Oh, and on student petitions. I always thought this was really classless. It usually amounted to bullying the professor, TA, etc. to do something they did not think was appropriate in their professional opinion. If you have a gripe, bring it to the person in question. But bringing a petition to adjust the grade on the midterm of whatever--just classless.

[Bean]

K, I have had the same experience (e.g., finger mis-typing the wrong version of their/there), and also consider myself a careful speller/writer. But these homophone substitutions have been happening to me more and more frequently recently. I think it is the constant barrage of un-copy-edited text, found in blogs and comments over the last several years, that makes a person numb to the mistakes that used to make our teeth itch. Or somehow the vocabulary section of our brain has noted the occasional substitution, over many thousands of occurrences of a word, and then comes out with the same substitution itself, directly to the typing fingers, without clearing it with the brain first. E.g., if 5% of occurrences of "Its" that you read are actually spelled "It's", then maybe 5% of the time, when your brain has requested an "Its" from the warehouse, an "It's" is shipped instead.

[vjk]

Determinant:

"
Linking verb? Nope, just plain illogical. "It is I" or "It was he" throws the sentence into the passive rather than the active voice.

"
Not at all. The 'subject->linking verb->complement' pattern in which the subject and the complement(or predicate nominative) both require the nominative case is common in quite a few of the Indo-European languages. There is no passivity connotation in the above.

The pattern exists for example in Latin, Greek, Hindi, modern German, modern Russian, etc, etc. French is a bit peculiar in this respect (one would expect the predicate nominative would be inherited from Latin, but it was lost although the remnants of the PN can be found in some Old French texts).

So, what you see in the modern English is a competition between the traditional/archaic predicate nominative as in 'It is I' and its modern substitute, an objective pronoun, as in 'It's me'. The choice is yours :)

"
Again, it's a case of rulemakers ignoring the role of voice and declension
"
Voice has got nothing to do with that altough declension, or more specifically the case of a noun, does.

There is no rule making here -- the pattern had been quite natural in the majority of the Indo-European languages for millenia.

The verb here is not a weak linking or auxiliary verb, it is a strong, active act of identification. Again, it's a case of rulemakers ignoring the role of voice and declension.

[Min]

Moi: "What does it do to a child to tell her that the speech of her family and friends is wrong, that it indicates ignorance or stupidity? Wouldn't you reject that implication? Wouldn't you resist such teaching?"

W. Peden: "Nope. I'd say that it's one of the most valuable lessons one can learn at school and the sooner it is learnt, the better."

Learning that you parents, neighbors, and friends are ignorant or stupid is a valuable lesson?

W. Peden: "I've benefited tremendously from being able to speak standard English."

I think that we are talking about two different things. You seem to talking about the benefits of learning the standard dialect. I am talking about how it has been taught. :)

[Min]

W. Peden: "Ideally, any student attending university should have a strong grasp of the spelling & grammar in their native language. The universities' role in this regard should be limited to assisting non-native speakers; for non-native speakers, the benefits of having their spelling & grammar corrected by highly educated speakers are obvious."

Change "language" to "dialect" and we are on the same page. :)

W. Peden: "Of course, we don't live in that ideal, since most high schools and elementary schools are atrocious, while the expanding intake of universities means that more and more inadequately taught students are going to university. Perhaps it will get to the point where universities have to expand undergraduate degrees to 5 years for most students, so they can give them a one-year crash course in the basic skills of numeracy & literacy that they should have learnt at high school."

IMO, innumeracy is even worse, although that is probably not much of a problem in economics, because of self-selection.

[Jacques René Giguère]

Min:" IMO, innumeracy is even worse, although that is probably not much of a problem in economics, because of self-selection. "
You mean self-slected like the guy who plaintively said from the back of the class ,once when I was at the blackboard writing GDP= C+I+G+X-M, "Sir, you can't add letters, only numbers..."
And if I only could reproduce the sound of his despairing voice...

[W. Peden]

Min,

"Learning that you parents, neighbors, and friends are ignorant or stupid is a valuable lesson?"

I thought the lesson was supposed to be that non-standard English is an indicator of these things, rather than sufficient proof?

"IMO, innumeracy is even worse, although that is probably not much of a problem in economics, because of self-selection."

Quite possibly.

"Change "language" to "dialect" and we are on the same page. :)"

I don't think someone should have to go to university to learn their native language.

"I think that we are talking about two different things. You seem to talking about the benefits of learning the standard dialect. I am talking about how it has been taught. :)"

Ideally, regional dialects wouldn't be looked down upon and teachers could truthfully teach children that their dialects are particular things about their culture (like wearing kilts or eating waffles) & the standard dialect would be a layer on top of that which expands horizons, like learning Latin in the Middle Ages. In practice, any teacher that doesn't convey the fact that speaking in a regional dialect can be a social impediment is irresponsible.

[Min]

Moi: "Change "language" to "dialect" and we are on the same page. :)"

W. Peden: "I don't think someone should have to go to university to learn their native language."

Well, as my linguistics prof said, there are five dialects of late Latin: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Rumanian.

W. Peden: "In practice, any teacher that doesn't convey the fact that speaking in a regional dialect can be a social impediment is irresponsible."

And one who makes it an impediment is worse.

[Old Ari]

Min,
Where I was brought up, in England, thee, and thou were commonly used. When I came to study French in Grammar school, I saw that the usage was similar to Tu and Vous.

[vjk]

Min,

"there are five dialects of late Latin"
That's odd. Was not your linguistics prof aware of the other 42 "dialects of late Latin" ?

"
And one who makes it an impediment is worse.
"

Between the two of you, W. Peden seems to have a much better grasp of reality.

Not endorsing the phenomenon of course.

[Min]

vjk: "Between the two of you, W. Peden seems to have a much better grasp of reality."

I am arguing against a particular view of reality, pointing out a different way of looking at things. :)

[Min]

@vjk: OK, you have smoked me out. ;)

W. Peden: "Ideally, any student attending university should have a strong grasp of the spelling & grammar in their native language."

IIUC, when it comes to native speakers, W. Peden means that they should have a strong grasp of the standard dialect. He seems to think that I disagree. Here is what I think:

Ideally, any student attending middle school who is a native speaker should be fluent in the standard dialect of the native language. I. e., if they speak a non-standard dialect, they should learn the standard dialect in, ahem, grammar school. :)

Now, that does not happen, for a variety of reasons, and so we get the problems that we do. And you do not have to shame students, or tell them that their habitual speech is incorrect, in order to teach them the standard dialect.

Why so young? Well, learning a second language or dialect is different (for most people) than learning your native tongue. You use different areas of the brain that are less specialized for language. The brain becomes less plastic as we age, and rapidly so before age 11.

[Nathan W]

Maybe a small amount on some projects, I think. I remember taking one course (in my second language) where 30% of the mark for the major term project was allocated to grammar. So, given that I didn't particularly like the way the course was taught, I engaged in an instance of rationality and dropped the course.

I would think something like 10% on writing-heavy projects for "style". This would let you formally recognize good organization and clear writing in addition to technically correct work, and would be a good way to wield a very small stick to encourage people to try to get the correct formulations when describing statistical methods or results. (This is something I'm well attuned to, as looking out for such issues is no small part of what I do when editing a paper.) That is, so long as you're very clear about where this 10% goes.

However, it would be somewhat unfair in some senses to the foreign students.

Perhaps you could give them a chance to rewrite, but then you'd have to decide if you want to be a language teacher as well. In my language teaching days I used to allow unlimited opportunities to rewrite stuff, but few students took the time to do so. Hard to say whether the same will apply at the university level, and whether you figure it's worth your (or their) time. I would consider giving them back the points straight away of they bothered with the second effort.

My $0.02