Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Sad, Sad State of College English

Confession: I have fallen off the Nablopomo wagon. I fell asleep with my daughter last night at a shockingly early 8:30 pm (my typical nodding off time is about 4.5 hours later), and though I opened my eyes again before midnight struck and immediately thought of it, the thought obviously was not rousing enough to plunge me into the icy night air to my computer to rescue my Nablopomo streak. Oh well.

I wanted to pass along this interesting article: "The sad, sad state of college English." I do not claim to have immaculate grammar, and yes I was an English major in college. I remember using the improper form of break/brake in an English paper in college and my professor having a minor panic attack in red ink. Apparently grammar errors no longer automatically cause paper grades to plummet. Odd. The article reinforces in my mind the importance of parents reading to kids and kids reading to themselves. When I was in 6th grade (I note from my crate of writing samples I have kept from that age upward) I used British spellings quite frequently. It must have been from all the words displayed in print on Monty Python. And the odd book here and there that I read.

2 comments:

Angela said...

Your little sticker on the right says "November 30 posts in 30 days." Could you do two in one day and call it even? There's probably a rule against that. Oh well, keep it up, it is nice getting a new post every day. I can't even manage one a month. Good going!

Laura A said...

Thanks for sharing the article. I read it while ironing this morning and kept having to stop ironing in order to laugh! (Tears coming out of the eyes blurs the vision.)

I was a big Bronte fan in the sixth grade, and so I used a lot of British spellings, especially "grey," which I still prefer, because it just seems *greyer.* Sadly, I did not discover Monty Python until much later, but I am still a fan today.