Answers to Spelling Questions:

[Gluestick]

1.  Correct

2.  Incorrect

3. Incorrect

4.  Correct

5. Incorrect

6.  Correct

7.  Incorrect

8.  Correct

9.  Correct

10.Correct

[powerdesal]

Whats the pass mark? ( no I am told telling my score - it might embaras..embrass...embarrassss... upset  someone.)

[Dick Smith]

100%

[KathyF]

100% here too.  I always found learning spellings easy when I was a child and at my primary school in the early 50s, learning a list of words was a regular homework task.  I've also always been a voracious reader.  However, my younger sister, who also reads a great deal, has always found it difficult to learn spellings and still makes some very common errors when she isn't concentrating.  I think it's like any kind of talent, some have it and others, however hard they try, find it difficult or impossible. The same sister is very artistic and is now an architect.  I can't draw for toffee! [:D]

[cooperlola]

I am absolutely useless at spelling.  I got one of the 10 incorrect, but it's a word which always foxes me so I'd normally check it before writing it in a formal letter etc.  If you know you can't spell, then that's what dictionaries are for, imo.  Although I'll admit to just guessing on occasions on fora etc, where it matters a little less perhaps.  It's a shortcoming of mine which I find very annoying and I wish I were a natural at it, as some seem to be.

[Dick Smith]

Yes - that was an interesting point in the article - of course just about everybody needs to check a spelling from time to time.

I spent years learning to spell separate - and I was still caught out from time to time... I had to learn that the root is similar to parallel. And, for some reason, I always used to mis-spell paraffin.

[cooperlola]

Parallel is about the only word which come naturally to me.  Thanks to a teacher who told me it's like the sound of Big Ben :- p-a-r-a- double l - e - l  [:D]

[Gluestick]

My bette noir in French at 13, JE, was Beaucoup. I kept forgetting the first "U".

My method of learning this was being held by the French-German master by the shorthairs where puberty would eventually produce sideboards and being smartly knee-kicked in the buttocks, in time with each separate letter!

B -E-A-U-C-O-U-P !

It seemed to inflict no lasting harm and I did remember: for ever!

That was, however, a leading Grammar school of its day with a serious belief in deserved corporal punishment: or, as one classmate thought, Capital Punishment!

Didn't quite come to that though.

[Www]

[powerdesal]

Mine is "professional" I don't know why.

[Judith]

Absolutely fine until I got to embarrassed and could I think whether it was right or not.  Of course I couldn't!  On the subject of problem spellings, mine is occasional (which I know perfectly well how to spell, it's just that the mind always wants to put in an "i" after the "a"!!!!

[Kitty]

Wardrobe - for years I thought it was waldrobe... but couldn't find it in the dictionary because I was looking in the wrong place.

[tegwini]

Anyone can  make mistakes in spelling, so many words lack logic in the way they are spelt.    As a teacher of teens many of whom can't be bothered to learn to spell,  I usually found that after a few hours of marking I couldn't spell either,  & would have to refer to a dictionary frequently, and for what should have been really easy words.

Sadly, it is essential to learn the spellings of difficult words.   I was not obliged to do this at school in the UK, and consequently at university in South Africa I was severely 'bounced' for my 'poor English' and had to improve or fail.   I made the effort and passed, but I have seen some very low-grade English spelling, grammar & punctuation from UK teachers at schools here.

Regards

Tegwini

 

[KathyF]

[quote user="tegwini"]

Anyone can  make mistakes in spelling, so many words lack logic in the way they are spelt.    As a teacher of teens many of whom can't be bothered to learn to spell,  I usually found that after a few hours of marking I couldn't spell either.....[/quote]

I think it's too late by the time they get to their teens, Tegwini, as the boredom threshold goes down at puberty. [;-)] Spellings need to be learned young to stick forever. We were pleased to see that our eldest grandson started to be given lists of spellings to learn for homework once he reached Juniors (or Key Stage 2 as I've been told to call it [:D]).

[cooperlola]

Here's one for you experts.  Spelled or spelt?  Dreamed or dreamt?  Which is correct?  I honestly never know which version is the right one.

[mint]

Spelled and dreamed are in the past tense.

Spelt and dreamt are past participles.

Eg , I spelled that correctly and I believe that Coops has spelt that correctly.

Last night I dreamed I was at Manderly (Daphne Du Maurier's immortal opening line in "Rebecca").  The narrator said that she had dreamt of being back at Manderly.

[Cat]

[quote user="Dick Smith"] I spent years learning to spell separate - and I was still caught out from time to time... I had to learn that the root is similar to parallel. [/quote]

I read somewhere, may well have been on this forum, that there is a rat in sep-arat-e, and now every time I spell the word I think of that rat and get the spelling right.

I still can't write the word necessary without mentally hearing a class-full of children chanting N-E-C-E double S.

 

[tegwini]

Kathy

It's never too late if you really want to do something - including spelling!   

I started late,  paid my own fees/living costs at university and really needed to pass.   Since I was majoring in English and history a good standard of English was essential.  

This is not the case in the UK  where as an external examiner I have been instructed to 'go easy' and mark leniently even if the standard of English is poor in a GCSE English exam.

 Regards

Tegwini

[just john]

Hostipal [8-|]

[Gluestick]

As a University BSchool External Examiner and Moderator mainly at MBA level, I was frequently rather unpopular at SATs meetings when reviewing foreign student's work.

As I pointed out, a precursor to an MBA is a pass in GMAT and the appalling standard of written English presented - and ignored by the tutors! -  was simply not acceptable.

However, naturally, the old Bums-On-Seats philosophy prevailed....................

[:@]

 

[KathyF]

[quote user="tegwini"]

Kathy

It's never too late if you really want to do something - including spelling!   [/quote]

Couldn't agree more, Tegwini. The point I was making is that the average teenager doesn't want to do anything as boring and (to their mind) pointless as learning spellings. After all what are computer spell-checkers for, except to save the effort of learning spellings. [;-)] It's just so much easier to motivate young children to learn and such a shame when the opportunity is missed because the current educational theory downplays learning by heart.

[tegwini]

Kathy

Quite so - thank goodness I am on my way out of teaching and not starting my career!

I can cope with spelling mistakes, since no one in infallible,  but it's bad attitudes that I find hard to cope with and  do dislike.  Kids these days have rights, and I suppose one right is that they are not meant to be bored by their teachers.  Learning for its own sake is now considered old fashioned.

Perhaps it's a shame  many employers do not accept the standards that some of our teens are capable of and refuse to employ them.   Employers are now aware that it is possible to pass GCSE with low percentages - as little as under 20% for a passing grade. 

So much for the UK government's claims that standards are improving.  Children are let down in primary school, and are moved up each year whether or not they are coping with the work. 

Regards

Tegwini

[tegwini]

Yes Gluey,  I suppose schools these days are also involved in the numbers game & also need bums on seats.   Must not upset the kids or parents.

Compromise seems be the motto of all in the UK, but in the long run it's to our detriment.

Regards

Tegwini

[Gluestick]

[quote user="tegwini"]

  Children are let down in primary school, and are moved up each year whether or not they are coping with the work. 

Regards

Tegwini

[/quote]

Here, here!

At the beginning of LMS, I was headhunted by a County Councillor friend and subsequently became a County Council Co-opted Secondary School Governor.

Forgive me for my old fashioned terminology, but I find that of all the kids starting their 11 plus year (first year) 90% had a reading, writing, arithmetic and comprehension age of circa 7+ !

Initially, the school had the services of a wonderful remedial teacher and taking these kids for two lessons of two hours per week, in just six months, she had 90% of the 90% up to 12+.

And then the LEA cut the funding on the grounds that "It was not required and there was no justification!

No wonder Britain has bred a generation or two of illiterate morons.

As a footnote and thanks mainly to my close friend the Chair of Govs (he was a retired ex army officer and later a scientist with Atomic Weapons Research and one of the World's leaders in high speed optics as well as a demon mathematician), who worked tirelessly for a number of years, even accommodating the new head as tried to find a suitable house, the school was turned around from the least desirable place locally, to now Grant Maintained and parents queuing up to send their children.

I feel very strongly about kids and their education and the fact that the whole question has become just as much of a political football as the NHS.

It has also been the subject for a sociological experiment; failed!

How dare politicians and others play games with kid's lives?

 

[tegwini]

Yes Gluey

Kids are let down- it's awful since they have only one chance.    So many initiatives, changes and so-called improvements - and to what result! 

When I was teaching in Oxfordshire, in the early 90s,  in a large comp/ex-grammar school, which was then considered a good school,  some senior staff  were sent to spend a day in all our feeder schools.    In my own village primary they were allowing the children to         'do their own thing' and work on projects.  No structured lessons at all.  The teachers were supposed to be monitoring, and hence educating them individually and claimed that the children made progress.   Even with me in the classroom it was very obvious many were wasting time and messing around.   It was common knowledge that this school produced children whose children had reading etc ages were well below their chronological age, and some never caught up.   The National Curriculum at least put a stop to that, likewise            SATS exams.

The UK model of always shunting children ever upwards, every year is,  in my opinion, one of the weaknesses of the system.   I shall doubtless get shouted down for this.  Rights and all that, and the little dears feeling uncomfortable  will be  the complaint of some.  Exams and tests and the possibility of staying down does concentrate the mind, and is the norm in many advanced countries, but not the UK.

Trouble is, lots of problems ahead for illiterates in the real world!

Regards

Tegwini

[Gluestick]

Being deeply involved in IT and having been working with Indian IT companies for a bit now, anyone with half a brain simply has to realise that the rate at which India, China and even Pakistan is producing well qualified grads (and not in Media Studies, Tourism and Leisure and Beauty Therapy, forsooth!), in a New Wave age of the so-called Knowledge Economy, bodes rather ill for Great Britain plc.

Ah, but I did say "Anyone with half a brain" so that lets out 99% of current politicians then......................[Www]

[quote]The UK model of always shunting children ever upwards, every year is,  in my opinion, one of the weaknesses of the system.   I shall doubtless get shouted down for this.  Rights and all that, and the little dears feeling uncomfortable  will be  the complaint of some. [/quote]

Not by me!

The whole concept of giving a child a certificate for failing [:P], reminds me of the Indian gentlemen I used to sometimes meet in London many years ago: their business cards read "BSc (Lon. Econ) Failed." e.g.