ENGLISH VIEW ON ENGLISH A PLEA FOR ACCURACY IN THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33513, 19 April 1974, Page 10

ENGLISH VIEW ON ENGLISH A PLEA FOR ACCURACY IN THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE

By STEW ART FROOME tn the "Daily Telegraph ’ I / • Reprinted by arrangement i When I first saw the strange words "frog-sporn" and "door-mouse written by a college student on the blackboard for her class of seven-year-olds to copy, I was almost as shocked as King Belshazzar must Slave Ireen when those fingers of a ghostly hand wiote t: en <me message on his palace wall.

It is true that the joints of my loins were not loosed nor did niv knees smite one against the other, lull 1 am certain that ni.\ ctiuntenaiice was changed and my thoughts troubled me greatly.

It was not the first time that I had seen such misspellings by a student, but ! these two simple words were surely within the compass of someone with a dozen or more years of schooling behind her? Moreover it was a nature lesson that was being taken, and even a teacher with a limited knowledge of this subject should be aware of the significance of the word “spawn", and that the dormouse derives his name from his well-known habit of hibernation. When I taxed the student with her carelessness, she was not in the least abashed. She knew she was a bad speller, but she claimed that spelling was unimportant and irrelevant. She belonged to the school of thought which holds that it is not the "mechanical”

accuracy of what you write that, matters, but rather the copious creativity of your self-expression. She believed sincerely that good spelling. : punctuation and grammatical ■'sentence construction were hindrances rather than aids "to lively, uninhibited written [communication. .More than lapses Now if these spelling; gaffes were the only ones I had come across. 1 suppose 'they could be regarded asl .unfortunate lapses, bilt not long ago, 1 saw an essay written by a college of education student in which these errors appeared: oppinions, aeqired. gramatical, discribe, answing (answering), extention, recieved. aquires, inadequices. proffessional. concret, deflected.: severly, effect for affect,| relie. amoungst, envirotnent, discused, responce, recieves, conected. The essay was not a long one. It had the title, “Why I Opted For Teaching”.'

Now there will be those who will assert that this ! student is not typical of the ■ general run of would-be [teachers in our colleges of education, but when I say that among 20 such essays which came to my notice, there were in total 192 spelling mistakes, besides punctuation and grammatical errors too numerous to relate, the very real extent of the problem’ can be appreciated. “Discouragement” We should not, however, blame the colleges of education for the poor performance of their students, because the foundations of their weakness have been, laid before college-entry and' are based on the shaky; philosophy of education which influences most of our schools, particularly the infant and junior departments. Here, inspectors and advisers have consistently promulgated the view that; schooling must be “child-; centred” not teacher-direct-; ed. and thai no child must'

be discouraged in his written self-expression by what are termed "punitive corrections." | This avoidance of critical assessment, which David (Henschel has so aptly and I amusingly called "the immaculate conception of the jvirgin page impenetrated by teacher’s red ink." has had disastrous effects on the i standards of written English in our schools When teachers have faithfully observed the advice of the inI spectorate, it is not surprising to find that this leniency has affected other important constituents of the skill of i writing. When teachers are 'absolved officially from having to mark spelling errors, it follows that they are likeily to be equally lax about other inaccuracies. Best performance

■ It might be thought that ■ the hurdle of the G.C.E. "O” level examination would prove an effective safeguard against declining standards Jof English, but this is not :|so. As the philosophy of le■niency in matters of written laccuracy has gained ground, so have examination requirements been trimmed. The [deplorable spelling of college [students mentioned earlier, came from young people, all Jof whom had gained at least an “O” level pass in English language. These are in the top 15 per cent of our population and are, therefore, among the elite. The public is entitled to wonder what the attainment of the rest is likely to be.

There are no indications ■that the frequently ex- ; pressed dissatisfaction at ■standards of English in our schools has in any way moved the progressives from their firmly-entrenched position. When, some time ago. I ventured to raise the matter of college students’ spelling at a conference of people interested in English leaching, one member looked at me witheringly and remarked: “Jane Austen couldn't spell.”

Laying the blame Indeed, the advocates of; i uninhibited self-expression, (far from being apologetic 'about the inaccuracies which seem to have accrued from: itheir enervating advice to, teachers, now seek by vanpus excuses to apportion' blame elsewhere for the objvious deterioration in English standards. Two of the; most widely canvassed excuses are teacher shortage iand the alleged bad effect on ‘children’s speech and writ-1 ing of the so-called "restrict-! ed language code” of many families, particularly those of the working-class.

Neither of these excuses bears serious critical examination. Never has the pupil-teacher-ratio been as favourable as it is today. Forty I years ago. classes of 50 children were normal in all schools, and ai that time there were no super-; numerary members of staff, to permit relief to hardpressed teachers, who had to tackle every subject on the

(curriculum without free periods for marking It !s (indeed, ironic to reflect that at a time when classes were much larger, teachers less well-trained and children less well-cared-lor standards jof reading and writing, not to mention numeracy were in my view, highet than they are today. Large classes We should not be surpris ed. therefore, to find that i the only known inquiries into the relationship between ■class size and attainment came out with findings that children in large classes were inclined to do better than those in smaller ones A moment's reflection would suffice to forecast that children taught in groups of 10, or even five, are not llikely to become good Writers of English if they are under the daily influence of people who themselves are deficient in the art. The second excuse for (falling literacy standards blames lotv cultural values in many homes for child Ten's language difficulties ■ Where parents have high ■professional status. the .children are more likely in acquire what is called th< "elaborated linguistic code which allows them to speak and write with greater profi ciency and use more com plex sentence structures This fact has been known since schools began, and should have inspired an educational resolve to male jour schools places of high culture, where good speech and writing would be re garded as commendable a< complishments. This, how lever, is not the case today.

The “disadvantaged" In "Breakthrough to Litei acy.” that much-praised and .popular publication spun I sored by the Schools’ Coun [cil. it states that if a child uses such expressions as “I (ain’t got no milk” or "We wasn't given none." these (should be accepted as his natural dialect form and al ■no time should he be made [to feel that his language is ugly, unacceptable, or bad. It seems that having accepted the position that some child ren are culturally dis advantaged we must do nothing about it.

There is current in America a view by certain linguists that dialects should have equal standing with standard English ,in the schools, and that children from disadvantaged ghett< homes should not be pre vented from using their own private lingo in the class room.

It will be a pity if this happens here, because what is needed is not greater ieniency towards spoken and written errors, but a bold, demanding return to syste malic, structured teaching methods which recognise that it is only through a painstaking accuracy of ex pression that worth-while creativity can be achieved We would do well to remember the words of Dr Johnson: "What is writtei without effort is in gencial read without pleasure.'