"NY" wrote in message
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"Steve Walker" wrote in message
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On 12/04/2021 09:44, wrote:
From "The Week":
University tutors are being told not to mark down work for spelling
mistakes because insisting on correct English could be seen as
€œhomogenous north European, white, male, elite€�. The Times says several
institutions are adopting €œinclusive assessments€� and Hull University
says it will €œchallenge the status quo€� by dropping the requirement for
a high level of written and spoken English.

I have long thought it wrong to mark down for spelling and grammar,
except in languages. Exams/assessments are for candidates to demonstrate
a clear understanding and ability in their chosen subjects, not to test
their knowledge of a different subject. Why should someone be marked down
in Physics, for poor spelling, when they are showing an excellent grasp
of the subject?

The pretty well universal requirement for GCSE English Language should
ensure that students and workers can spell use grammar reasonably
correctly (if they make the effort) and should not be tested during other
exams.

It depends whether the poor spelling and grammar actually mar the
intelligibility. When I was at university in the early 80s, someone I knew
who was doing a computer-science course asked me to sanity-check a report
that he was writing, to see if it made *technical* sense. I remember it
because its title was "Huh! Interactive Languages Are Really Yuk" -
contrived to spell out Hilary, the name of his tutor whom I think he
fancied.

Well... the report took some wading through. There were spelling mistakes
all over, but I glossed over those: few of them made it difficult to
understand the report. What *did* cause great problems, to the extent that
I had real problems working out what he was trying to say, was his very
poor grammar and his partial sentences which petered out half way through.
It took me several hours to read a couple of pages, rather than a few
minutes. I found myself itching to rewrite the whole thing from the ground
up, if only to try and clarify in my own mind the gist of his report.

It was quite a shock to read something which was *so* illiterate from
someone who would have passed his A levels to get to university and who
spoke perfectly lucidly most of the time (apart from after a few pints,
but that applies to all of us!). Given the sneaky acronym in the title, I
almost wonder whether there was a secret code in his mistakes - the sort
of thing that Inspector Morse would spot in one of Colin Dexter's novels
;-)

I find it striking how many engineers are surprisingly
poor at expressing themselves clearly.

You can see it in here too.