The sad, sad state of college English
With samples.
18 Responses to “The sad, sad state of college English”
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November 17th, 2008 at 11:55 am
“Some people use bad language and is not even aware of the fact.”
If they can’t speak and write English how will they possibly manage Chinese?
What will Obama do? A New Deal for edumacation?
November 17th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
For one of the classes I wrote a paper for, one I didn’t work really hard on, I was accused of plagiarism because “it seemed to well written for a college paper”. He was a Professor of Journalism. That should tell you how much effort his students put into their work.
November 17th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Obama will spread the conjugation.
Some people who have a bigger piece of grammer will have to give it to others who don’t have a very big piece.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
In grad school I taught intro political science classes and saw all kinds of gems. My favorite:
“It’s like putting your finger in the proverbial dyke.”
November 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
“If they can’t speak and write English how will they possibly manage Chinese?”
Easy — they can just look at the pictures. 😉
November 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
If I told you I’d seen that, and worse, would you believe me?
I have.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Is our children learning?
November 17th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Some colleges allow students to test-out of lower-level English courses. That’s what I did to avoid crap assignments.
It’s a good thing, too. I’d hate to compare the works of Maya Angelou with the works of Mark Twain in a nonsensical essay.
November 17th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Are some of you pulling our legs?
November 17th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
straightarrow –
they alls is.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
The article talks about an English teacher highlighting the poor performance of some of his students.
Who is it demonstrating a failure to perform?
For my grammar mistakes I claim mental instability due to too much WoW.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Magus, he’s a college English teacher. The failure to perform is not his, because his students should have been beyond mistakes like that long before college. I do, however, hope that he points these errors out when he finds them, along with an appropriate reduction in grade.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:29 am
That’s the sad, sad state of public education. Forget college. You don’t get through a good junior high school without a decent grasp of the three Rs, nor is there a country that can survive much of this illiteracy.
(Now I’ll bet you that the comments in this post contain fewer than the average number of typos and grammatical errors found in other posts)
More than once, I’ve had college accounting majors apply for work, who couldn’t calculate the sales tax (using a calculator). Furthermore, no one I’ve asked (granted, I haven’t asked everyone I’ve ever met) was able to back-calculate from the total, to reach the non-taxed sale price. We all know that if the price of an item is 100 bucks, and the tax rate is 7% the total is $107.00, but how many of you, in less than 20 seconds, can tell me the pre-tax amount from a taxed total of, say, $234.97.?
November 18th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Assuming the same 7%, it should be $219.60 (and yes, I used a calculator for the actual math).
$234.97/1.07 = $219.598130841 or $219.60
November 18th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Here’s a couple more. They involve the understanding of basic astronomy.
If I’m looking at a thin, crescent moon on the horizon, just after the new moon, what direction am I facing? What time is it (roughly)?
What time of year was this picture taken? Hint; where is the center of the disk?
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/46/017_PP0132~Planet-Earth-Posters.jpg
Then there’s the ever popular; when was the war of 1812?
November 18th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I can haz degree now?
November 18th, 2008 at 2:57 am
“Also, we live in a culture where everything moves so quickly that you don’t have time to think about it. Reading lets you slow things down and think about them. But, because they don’t want to read, you get sentences like these”
That’s one of the big problems, many of today’s young people dont like to read ANYTHING. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard one of my daughter’s schoolmates say “reading is boring” or “why should I read when I can watch a video”. Most of them could’nt tell time on a analog clock!
November 18th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Folks, you haven’t lived until you’ve been taken to the Dean for handing out a ‘D.’ Said student cannot spell, cannot make nouns and verbs agree, and cannot grasp the difference between “affect” and “effect.” He also rarely showed up to class, and, when in attendance, he slept. Still, I am expected to give him a minimum of a ‘B’ because that ‘D’ will keep him in the running for a coveted seat at Wharton. I told him I would amend his grade if he resubmitted his work, corrected, and if he would tell me what other poor grade that ‘B’ was intended to support. “I made a ‘C’ in finance.” Nice. He never submitted the work for the grade improvement. I wonder how he’s doing at Wharton?