English language too hard?

[upinwath]

Do you think that regional accents hinder people in this country though? It's like children have to learn two different forms of English, the English that is spoken with their friends and family, and formal English. The problem occurs when children spend most of their time using using their regional accent so they struggle with the formal version.

 

No effect.

My kid is learning three languages without problems. One of those languages, Javanese, is actually three languages because there are three distinct levels of language depending on who you are speaking to.

[English]

No effect.

My kid is learning three languages without problems. One of those languages, Javanese, is actually three languages because there are three distinct levels of language depending on who you are speaking to.

 

 

 

Javanese? where's that spoken then?

[Ousetunes]

Bone idle teenages, 'educated' by teachers whom themselves struggle with spelling and grammar, raised on a junk diet of email, 'txtspk' and a verbal capacity of a doorbell, are more likely the reasons for this pathetic claim.

 

Learn another language: it teaches you more about your own.

 

English has its difficulties but none which a decent education shouldn't help overcome.

 

PS. I can read, write and speak Hindi in Devanagari script and know quite a bit of Spanish, too. Learning these languages has helped my english enormously. A bit of effort on my part, eh?

[matsalleh]

Javanese? where's that spoken then?

 

Possibly in Java? Or maybe a computer gizmo.

[harvey19]

My parents born in 1914 and 1919 could spell, read and write without any problems. Maybe we need to examine the way they were taught always remembering they left school at an earlier age than the present generation.

[chimay]

We learnt a lot of spelling and maths by rote. I remember getting 6d (2 1/2p) from my teacher for learning my 6 times table and then answering 6 questions about it from my classmates at the same time as standing on my chair. Mind you after that I gave up.......

[andyofborg]

Do you think that regional accents hinder people in this country though? It's like children have to learn two different forms of English, the English that is spoken with their friends and family, and formal English. The problem occurs when children spend most of their time using using their regional accent so they struggle with the formal version.

 

it didn't hinder me or my parents or their parents etc

 

is it a coincidence that the falling of standards had coincided with increasing interference of the education system by politicians?

[Squiggs]

Soaring levels of illiteracy?

 

When was it that English became more difficult to learn? Has it been recently made more complex than it was 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago?

 

Perhaps I have a reasonable command of the language (not perfect and I am prone to mistakes, it took me until I was 33 to realise my misuse of the apotrophe in the possessive "its") because my parents taught me to read before packing me off to school. There was no "It's the teachers job to teach my kid, why should I do it for them?" attitude.

 

My own view is that the use of the keyboard over the pen and ink is a factor. I don't know why this is, and I have no data, so my view is only supported anecdotally, but as an example; typing this post I had to go back and edit the word "taught" as I had typed "tought". I have no idea why I would do this, as I am quite aware of the correct spelling, and I would never have written that mistake by hand. Errors like this in my typing are quite common, yet when writing I have little need for tipp-ex - and I work at a keyboard every day, it is not a case of hitting the wrong key. I know exactly where the "A" and the "O" keys are positioned.

 

For some reason I make spelling mistakes (as opposed to simple typos) much more frequently at a keyboard, than with a pen.

[Ms Macbeth]

Do you think that regional accents hinder people in this country though? It's like children have to learn two different forms of English, the English that is spoken with their friends and family, and formal English. The problem occurs when children spend most of their time using using their regional accent so they struggle with the formal version.

 

It was commonplace when I went to school in Scotland (many moons ago) that however roughly children spoke in the home/outside when they were in school they had to speak more formally. I believe this was frowned on in later generations and I didn't think it happened any more.

 

For the majority of children who had been brought up speaking dialectally, the ability to codeswitch did them no harm especially when they were looking for employment. For some people, being able to speak plain English in situations like interviews, would give them more confidence.

[zepstox]

Politicians getting involved in education is a problem especially now that headmasters are now school managers. Maybe the teaching methods are at fault. Maybe some teachers are not literate enough to notice the errors? Maybe parents don't care as much as they used to, whether their kid is getting the right education or not. Either way, business needs kids who can read, write, spell and add up past 100.

I'd be embarrassed if my kid spelt process "proses" like one of my Corus inductees did.