And to think, they used to teach spelling in school.
Oregon seventh-graders and high school students will now be able to use their computer’s automated spelling checker when taking the state writing test, the Oregon Department of Education announced today.
The test asks students to write an essay in response to a prompt. Their writing is judged on six traits, including organization and sentence fluency. Conventions – which includes spelling, capitalization and similar features which spell check can detect and fix – is the single most important element in a student’s score, with conventions score counted for twice as much as any other trait.
One more actual life skill tossed out the window so that little Johnny and Suzie don’t get their feelings hurt by their report cards and the teachers can have even more “planning days”.
My doctor Daughter graduated from Sam Barlow High School in 1998 and went on to pre-med at the University of Oregon. I was actively involved in editing her papers for her first two years there.
She had never scored less than an “A-” on anything she ever wrote in High School or the University.
OTOH, when your commenter went to school, every spelling mistake lowered your final grade one mark, so if you started with an “A+”, and mis-spelled 5 words in a theme or essay, you would wind up with a “B”. There was a REAL incentive to be able to spell correctly.
Same in the police Academy, where we had to write a lot of reports. Spelling counted for 10% of our entire grade in the Academy. We had 10 spelling words to learn every night, and a quiz first thing in the morning, every morning, first class session, for 16 weeks.
Barron and I were discussing this post and we both appreciate constructive criticism in general to improve upon anything in our daily lives. Negative feedback is as critical as positive feedback. Barron doesn’t have too much of an issue with the spell checker function for the students’ test because the spell checker only spells words correctly and doesn’t do anything for grammar but will actually increase grammatical errors. It will not catch the misuse of words such as their, there, and they’re and it may change the word altogether to what it thinks is correct. He still thinks it’s stupid because people should know how to spell and NOT rely on the spell checker.
Janelle B.
After checking, I found not only spellcheck, but also some very easily accessable, sophisticated “grammar check” programs that will not only correct your spelling, but also your grammar useage, your punctuation and even “style”.
They’re an enhanced, automated proofreader ……. it’s getting close to us not even having to think anymore – just plug a few key words into a computer and whammo, your report will be written for you using perfect English (or any other language I’m sure) !
It’s all quite sad to me actually. Course I’m old and remember when there was pride in using the English language correctly – and legible writing was a must.
I struggled with spelling until about the 7th grade, when I finally got so tired of of bad grades in spelling (we actually had a whole half hour, 3 days a week, dedicated to just spelling until I was in High School) that I buckled down and learned how to do it.
Nowadays, I consider it a challenge to have the only spelling errors in my writing be due to typos, not ignorance. I also find myself correcting a lot of my friends on their spelling & grammar.