Poor English isn’t a monopoly of nonnative English speakers

[Joe Carillo]

Is the inability to write clear, cogent English a problem only among nonnative English speakers? Not so, says English teacher Kara Miller of Babson College in the United States. In an article she wrote for the May 19, 2010 issue of the Boston Globe, Miller says that so many students go to college in the US without a command of the fundamentals of reading and writing in English. And she reports that English teachers with strong communication skills are both rare and valuable: “Recall that when Massachusetts implemented a teachers’ test 12 years ago, the public was shocked to discover that more than 30 percent of prospective teachers failed the literacy portion.”

Read Kara Miller’s “Failure to communicate” in the Boston Globe now!

My thanks to Filipino writer-teacher Isabel Escoda in Hong Kong for calling my attention to this article.

[hill roberts]

I just read Kara Miller's article and I'm not at all surprised. Indeed, a couple of years ago, they made a survey on those Oxbridge students and graduate students on business letter-writing. 80% fell short
of the test: the lack of knowledge of proper punctuation marks; paragraphing; spelling; basic grammar. In short, those students from fancy universities like Cambridge and Oxford were, in fact, mediocre in their knowledge of writing simple business letters, let alone private letters that would catch the attention of professors whom they wished to impress. It's shocking even to this day to find many  commenters from Europe and the United States, constantly confusing where to place the dreaded apostrophe, or how to use its and it's. A British MP fb friend of mine had one commenter who provoked outrage by pointing it out to him that he, a Member of Parliament) had put the apostrophe incorrectly. Anyway, a heated discussion ensued when one unpleasant commenter began to write malicious short comments to other commenters and in bold letters, a big no-no in Europe when posting comments since it means shouting at others. Still, he carried on with his dirty language. I decided to send him a private message and threatened to "call the police" if he didn't behave himself. He replied right away with two words, and in block letters, "yes sir"--which means that if you showed bravery to these impertinent commenters, they'd soon realise how stupid their actions were in the first place. ::)Still, Facebook is the best place to encounter people who fall short in their quest to show that they are more superior, having gone to well-known universities.