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English people aren't good at english. Wait a minute...

adma said:
Yeah, I'm suprised.
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Good catch there, Adma :)

As for the title of this thread, "English people aren't good at English", please note that people in Canada that speak English are rarely English people. I am English myself, born in London, England, emigrated to Canada in 1976. My children are Canadian-born, and are a mix of my English background and their mother's Eastern European background. Even though my childrens' first language will be English, they are not themselves English people, but are Canadians, and if you want to dig deeper, they're Canadians of mixed European heritage.
 
It's simple. Native speakers are good at conversational speech, while non-native speakers are often good at grammatical and technical terms.

At a Grade 10 level, English tests usually focus on the latter.
 
Yes, I know many people from India (close friends), who know English very well.


Nonetheless, if I start using improper English, they do not know what I am talking about.

This does not mean they do not know the English language. It is that they do not understand the Canadian variant of the language as they have been mostly taught British English.

About myself, I am weak with grammar and spelling, but I do well in school, because I have great ideas. After Grade 10 or so, the teachers focus more on what you are saying rather then how you are saying it. Even in English class.
 
we are having a general conversation...

I usually can polish up my writing to get A most of the time.

I know many people who got an A in English yet talk like a bunch of idiots.
 
lordmandeep said:
After Grade 10 or so, the teachers focus more on what you are saying rather then how you are saying it. Even in English class.
Click to expand...
That thinking will get you killed in the work force. I have personally been involved in the hiring process for entry and mid level positions and the very first thing I did was to give the stack of resumes to our admin assistant to wean out any with grammatical or spelling errors. Only those that were error free made it to my desk for further review. Sure, maybe someone with "great ideas" got tossed out, but if you don't have an eye for detail in presentation, then you're likely to make mistakes on the job as well, making my firm look bad in the process.

Now, of course, this is where someone writes that they're a terrible speller but still have a great job, lots of money, great success, etc. This will certainly be the case, and I often find people in the workforce who can't write or spell well at all, so someone is hiring these people. However, it's a numbers game, and if you present yourself poorly then you're eliminating possible opportunities.
 
communicating by means of the english language is probably one of the most important skills a person could have. the isolation brought on by my disability is detrimental to my ability to speak properly and effectively. i constantly find my self at a loss for words while trying express my thoughts. vocal interaction with those who have a powerful command of the english language is vital. if you don't use it, you lose it. i call it "verbal atrophy".
 
I start stammering sometimes if I get too excited...

But hey Claudius the Stammer became a Roman Emperor... :D
 
Admiral Beez said:
That thinking will get you killed in the work force. I have personally been involved in the hiring process for entry and mid level positions and the very first thing I did was to give the stack of resumes to our admin assistant to wean out any with grammatical or spelling errors. Only those that were error free made it to my desk for further review. Sure, maybe someone with "great ideas" got tossed out, but if you don't have an eye for detail in presentation, then you're likely to make mistakes on the job as well, making my firm look bad in the process.

Now, of course, this is where someone writes that they're a terrible speller but still have a great job, lots of money, great success, etc. This will certainly be the case, and I often find people in the workforce who can't write or spell well at all, so someone is hiring these people. However, it's a numbers game, and if you present yourself poorly then you're eliminating possible opportunities.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Proper use of written English is important to establishing the ethos of the writer. Thus, no matter how great your ideas are, if you want people to consider them seriously, it helps to convey them using correct spelling and grammar.
 
This has nothing to do with slang, nor does it have to do with dialect differences between British English and Canadian English. It has to do with the rules of grammar in writing. People don't speak more poorly than they write; the rules of speech are simply different than the rules of formal writing.

It makes perfect sense to me that people who are native speakers of other languages might do better than native English speakers, due (unfortunately) to the educational system here. It's got to do with the way written English is taught. Children here used to be taught using the "whole language" approach, in which it was assumed that children learn to read naturally and not to worry if they weren't picking it up. Spelling was de-emphasized and not corrected, lest it hurt a child's self-esteem. My friend's son was never taught parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc.). And I saw a short essay by someone in her late teens which had not only poor spelling, but incomplete sentences and thoughts.

On the other hand, if you've taken any lessons to learn a second language (and most of us can think back to French classes), you know there's a heavy emphasis on grammatical rules (and you are taught to apply the rules of formal writing to your speech). You don't learn to violate those rules because no one teaches you that.

The writing quality of the posts on this forum is actually well above the average of what I normally see on internet forums. I attribute that to the subject matter drawing a more educated crowd in general. But even so, as has been pointed out above, you need only look at the spelling and grammar in these posts to get an inkling as to why so many here fail English literacy tests.
 
BuildTO said:
The writing quality of the posts on this forum is actually well above the average of what I normally see on internet forums. I attribute that to the subject matter drawing a more educated crowd in general. But even so, as has been pointed out above, you need only look at the spelling and grammar in these posts to get an inkling as to why so many here fail English literacy tests.
Click to expand...

you dont know what your talkin about lol
 
The writing quality of the posts on this forum is actually well above the average of what I normally see on internet forums. I attribute that to the subject matter drawing a more educated crowd in general. But even so, as has been pointed out above, you need only look at the spelling and grammar in these posts to get an inkling as to why so many here fail English literacy tests.
Click to expand...

I think the "internets are ruining our children" argument is tired by now...Almost all of the kids I've known during high school speak on the internet or chat with poor grammar and spelling, similar to adma's post above mine, yet some of them are still at the top of their English classes and some remain at the bottom, just like always. I did well in the class myself, but I do not write essays and speak conversationally in the same manner....

Anyways, this is a literacy test, not an essay contest. I think mostly everyone here so far has been pretty literate...
 
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