Student spelling and grammar' "crisis"

Rebecca Smithers

Education correspondent^

Standards of spelling and grammar among an entire generation of English-speaking university students are now so poor that there is "a degree of crisis" in their written use of the language, the publisher of a new dictionary warned yesterday.

The problem is not confined to Britain, but applies also to students in Australia, Canada and the US.

Faye Carney, dictionaries publisher said: "We thought it would be useful to get in touch with lecturers, teachers and academics to find out what problems their students were having with their writing and what help they might need from a dictionary. The results were shocking.

Students were regularly found to be producing incomplete or rambling, poorly connected sentences, mixing metaphors "with gusto" and overusing dull, devalued words such as "interesting" and "good".

Overall they were unclear about appropriate punctuation, especially the use of commas, and failed to understand the basic rules of subject/verb agreement and the difference between "there" "their" and "they're".

Bethan Marshall, a lecturer in English at King's College London and a member of the London Association of Teachers of English, said:

"The type of student we're getting now is very different from what we were seeing 10 years ago and it is often worrying to find out how little students know. The emphasis on phonics in the teaching of English in England does, I think, make us worse at spelling. We fetishise spelling in this country, unlike in Germany where, if a word is regularly misspelled, then it is changed."

The Encarta dictionary for students has a list of 800 commonly misspelled words, and notes which distinguish between pairs of words pronounced similarly but spelled differently and which have different meaning - for example, "faze" and "phase", and "pray" and "prey".

"We are sure that the use of computers has played a part. People rely increasingly on automatic tools such as spell-checks which are much more passive than going to a dictionary and looking something up. That can lull them into a false sense of security."

This has significant implications for the future, especially for young people."

The Independent,

October, 2003

Упражнение V. Переведите на слух:

The principal, научно-исследовательская работа, tuition, dons, proctor, степень бакалавра, dissertation, диссертация, grant, университетская форма, chapel, thesis, University chancellor, tutorial, master's degree, university fees, low-interest loan, to rusticate, to fine, tuition fees, заём по низким процентам, ректор университета, диссертация, campus, modest means-tested grants, плата за обучение, academic dress, практические занятия, укомплектовывать штаты, диплом.

Повторите это задание несколько раз.

"I shall have to give you ten days or $20."

-"I'll take the $20, Judge."

Контрольная работа к уроку 5. Переведите текст письменно, используя словарь к уроку 5:

STUDENT FINANCE (Great Britain)

One of the first things that the Labour government did after it came to power in 1997 was to change the way in which students are supported. Out went the universal, state-financed higher education that had existed since the 1960s. Maintenance grants (for living expenses and rent) were abolished, and, in 1998, tuition fees (paid to the university) came in. Today students have to pay their own way through university, relying mostly on a system of low-interest loans. This sent out a clear message: that a university education was no longer a universal right, but was something that equipped the graduate with a strong advantage in the jobs market, and therefore had to be paid for.

The new policy went down particularly badly in Scotland and Wales. First the Scottish Parliament decided to abolish tuition fees, and then, earlier this month, the Welsh Assembly voted to re-introduce modest means-tested student grants. The government announced last October that it was starting a review of student finance, thus preparing the ground for a discreet U-turn.

The principal argument against introducing tuition fees and scrapping maintenance grants is that it has deterred those young people from poorer

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backgrounds from applying to university for fear of going heavily into debt. So the government will probably introduce means-tested grants to save some face.

Either way, the government will have to come up with something that solves the problem of access, and also ensures that universities continue to get sufficient income from their students.

The Economist. February 23rd, 2002

Домашнее задание к уроку 6: Выполните упражнения I, II, III, IV.

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