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Texting, Twitter contributing to students' poor grammar skills, profs say - The Globe a... - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article4304193 Grammar Texting students
shared by Randall Oxendine on 09 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills. Almost a third of those students are failing. "Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level," says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo University. "We would certainly like it to be a lot lower." Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.
  • Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none. Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser University
  • The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an e-mail to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.
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Facebook and Twitter 'harm pupils literacy' claim headmasters | Mail Online - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...iteracy-claim-headmasters.html facebook literacy
shared by Simora Martin on 09 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Children's literacy is being damaged by social media, headmasters claim.They say pupils are too distracted by sites such as Facebook and Twitter to bother to read a book.As a result, thousands are poor spellers and have little understanding of grammar.
  • A survey of 214 secondary school heads found that 70 per cent believe Facebook and Twitter are ‘bad for literacy’.
  • Excessive use of such sites means youngsters’ spelling and grammar have deteriorated.
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  • The research, conducted by Booked, a magazine for schools, found that half of Britain’s headmasters are concerned about their pupils’ approach to reading.
  • ‘From a social perspective, it appears to confirm the massive rise in social media use among the young is having a major impact on writing skills with little or no attempt by parents to stop it.’
  • Bosses regularly complain about the poor literacy standards among school leavers, whose written English in applications forms and CVs can be shocking.
  • England is the only developed country producing children who are worse at reading and maths than their grandparents, according to a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
  • ‘While the Government is doing good work to improve the rigour of the curriculum, it must also learn lessons from those countries that perform well, on how to improve and retain these vital skills, to ensure the UK doesn’t find itself with an unskilled workforce.’
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