caskur™
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« on: April 06, 2010, 10:19:03 pm » |
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one thing to learn formal higher education and another to deal with people who speak pigeon English, ie immigrants and every walk of life in between.
I have politicians, scientists and lowly illiterate immigrants in my circle.
I have to juggle a common ground when communicating with everyone. That is the Australian way and as far as I am concerned, the right way. “when in Rome”… so to speak.
English is changing (evolving), and not really for the better for the most part…
I think formal English is very important. I think being clever enough to change the rules is fun…it won’t get you published though… hey wait a minute, it does with the interwebz…lol I noticed myself changing tenses when I write if I am very tired and think, wha’ tha’…I’m too tired to redo it and still send it off anyway.
At the new FC I have broken the record, with the game, “Wordjam.” I am super quick with little words having been a genius at scrabble beating everyone for years but when I play Wordjam, they allow some words (USA) but words from other countries they disallow, for instance, “wog” isn’t allowed but “****” is and “cum.” All three words are informal.
Just cope. What else can you do?
The standard world wide is very low now. Calculators are another contributing problem to the dumbing down of people. They should ONLY be used AFTER kids have learned their tables.
My science teacher neighbour laments the fact that by the time students get to her at a tertiary level, students don’t have the basics for breaking down and sounding out words. They can’t do it, as they’ve never been taught to.
Rote learning in primary school is the ONLY proven way to teach littlies and unfortunately it went out of style years ago… Today they’re trying to bring it back but the teachers of the modern generation don’t even know how to spell. When I went to college in the early nineties, and in my early thirties, my 23 yr old art teacher (also an English teacher) used to ask me how to pronounce or spell some words… Yes, it really was that bad.
IMO, the answer to "how important is a formal education?"
is,
Very, very!!
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