Dropped Apostrophes Spark Grammar War in Britain
See on Scoop.it – Learning, Teaching, Leading
Some write tomatoes and some write tomato’s. In the face of confusion over correct usage of the wayward apostrophe, one English local council has decided to scrap it, at least in street names.
I have to confess that the laziness and ignorance that surrounds the use of apostrophes is often a source of great irritation. I don’t get mad at students, although I bemoan the fact that they are so lacking in awareness of the importance of grammar and punctuation issues, usually because of poor teaching. Ironically, the reasons for this are a reliance on content (even in English, where the language of text is lost in a welter of interpretation), too much – no too little – student-centred learning, which prevents the teacher from getting down in the classroom to teach writing at the ‘pen-face’, and bad assessment practices.
We forget that, before formal assessment came along, kids were always writing, without the pressure attached to assessment. They were free to make mistakes and we were more empowered, if you like, to correct them. The in-class assessment task is the black death of good teaching: incredibly stressful for kids and of zero value in promoting the learning objectives of the class.
It all matters, and far more that some bloody task which simply apes the HSC…
See on rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com
