English teenagers 'are most illiterate in the developed world', report reveals

originally posted by: Soloprotocol
The English have never been the brightest...Thick as ####.

Makes me wonder how they had the largest empire in the world, managed to beat off hitlers luftwaffe, invented the steam engine, had the first all turret battle ship, patented the jet engine, figured out radar, got the industrial revolution going...

Overcrowded and underfunded state schools.
Constantly adding things to the curriculum that take time from core subjects.

Those are two possible reasons.
There are also a lot of parents who were taught that spelling and grammar didn't matter. It was a trend for a while, rather like the promotion of ebonised was.

originally posted by: pikestaff

originally posted by: Soloprotocol
The English have never been the brightest...Thick as ####.

Makes me wonder how they had the largest empire in the world, managed to beat off hitlers luftwaffe, invented the steam engine, had the first all turret battle ship, patented the jet engine, figured out radar, got the industrial revolution going...

Did you know that the first copper wire was invented by two sweatys fighting over a penny?

a reply to: SprocketUK

There are also a lot of parents who were taught that spelling and grammar didn't matter. It was a trend for a while, rather like the promotion of ebonised was.

While I do promote the use of standard English, so-called true Ebonics is much more than slang, I have to go out but maybe when I come back I'll explain why.

a reply to: Spider879

Sure, but it isn't standard English so shouldn't have any part of an English lesson apart from literature where it may form part of work by certain poets maybe.

I suffered the great disadvantage of being taught in ITA, the Initial Teaching Alphabet.
This was in the 1970's in Cornwall.
ITA was an attempt, I think, to make letters look like the way they sounded (?)
God alone knows, no-one had a clue what it was about, certainly not my parents.



Like most children educated in ITA, I found the transition to normal written English extremely difficult. My grades for English were very poor considering how well I performed in other subjects. Corporal punishment still existed when I was taught in that system. We were made to sit at the front of class if we couldn't spell or if we made lots of mistakes. One poor girl I remember was humiliated for the best part of an hour, with the teacher standing with her in front of the board and her class mates until she could spell a word correctly. She was shouted at and finally wet herself. It was child abuse.

Forty years later I still have no love for written English. I don't read literature, I have no interest in poetry. Just thinking about being taught English in an English school makes me ill. I wouldn't encourage any child to specialise in English language.

I'm sure that hatred for English language tuition is passed from parent to child. I wonder if that couldn't be responsible for why some children today hate English classes & perform as poorly as their parents did ?

originally posted by: SprocketUK
a reply to: Spider879

Sure, but it isn't standard English so shouldn't have any part of an English lesson apart from literature where it may form part of work by certain poets maybe.

Totally agree with you, as long as the economic and power relationship lays with in the standardized English, but it's off shoots do carry certain cultural values as well if I am not off the mark Shakespeare's English is almost as foreign sounding to us as middle English was to him ex:

Old English was spoken and written in Britain from the 5th century to the middle of the 11th century and is really closer to the Germanic mother tongue of the Anglo-Saxons.

With the arrival of the French-speaking Normans in 1066, Old English underwent dramatic changes and by 1350 it had evolved into Middle English. Middle English is easier but still looks like a foreign language much of the time. Here is an example from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the most famous work in Middle English:
Ye seken lond and see for your wynnynges,
As wise folk ye knowen all th'estaat
Of regnes; ye been fadres of tydynges
And tales, bothe of pees and of debaat. (The Man of Law's Tale)

(Translation)
You seek land and sea for your winnings,
As wise folk you know all the estate
Of kingdoms; you be fathers of tidings,
And tales, both of peace and of debate.
By about 1450, Middle English was replaced with Early Modern English, the language of Shakespeare, which is almost identical to contemporary English.
www.shakespeare-online.com...

And if the above is hard no one would sit in aboard room without a translator for someone speaking old English,so what make a language standard depends on the power relationship, if there was a revolution Cockney could very well become the standard and the so-called Queens English became informal speech.

Ebonics like middle English above derives from contacts between two linguistic groups the speech patterns are much more than slang, they have rules much of it rooted in West African speech pattern.

Where did Ebonics come from?
On this point, linguists are quite divided. Some emphasize its English origins, pointing to the fact that most of the vocabulary of Ebonics is from English and that much of its pronunciation (e.g. pronouncing final th as f) and grammar (e.g. double negatives, "I don't want none") could have come from the nonstandard dialects of English indentured servants and other workers with whom African slaves interacted.

Others emphasize Ebonics' African origins, noting that West African languages often lack th sounds and final consonant clusters (e.g. past), and that replacing or simplifying these occurs both in US Ebonics and in West African English varieties spoken in Nigeria and Ghana. Moreover, they argue that the distinction made between completed actions ("He done walked") and habitual actions ("We be walkin") in the Ebonics tense-aspect system reflects their prevalence in West African language systems and that this applies to other aspects of Ebonics sentence structure.

Other linguists are drawn to the similarities between Ebonics and Caribbean Creole English varieties, for instance, the fact that both frequently drop is and are , and that both permit dropping word initial d, b, and g in tense-aspect markers (Caribbean examples include habitual/progressive (d)a, past tense (b)en, and future (g)on). These traits suggest that some varieties of American Ebonics might have undergone the kinds of simplification and mixture associated with Creole formation in the Caribbean and elsewhere. They might also suggest that American Ebonics was shaped by the high proportions of Creole-speaking slaves that were imported from the Caribbean in the earliest settlement periods of the thirteen original colonies.
www.linguisticsociety.org...

Another example that power determine standardization is a move in Jamaica to have what is known a Jamaican Patois to become the standard..not sure if I agree with that measure ,but it's being discussed, incidentally a plethora of African words seeped into American Standard English and spread around the globe with it's carriers, among the most common is the word Okay OK is a word denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment. "OK", as an adjective, can also express acknowledgment without approval,some said it stems from Wolof dialects or Bantu dialects.

In Colonial India, English schools hosted children from native peoples along side the children of the Colonials. To the surprise of teachers, local children excelled, and exceeded, their piers from jolly olde England and their superior genes.

Clearly, the deciding factor is simply: who wants it more. Underprivileged kids from 3rd World countries have a great motivation to apply themselves. Here, the white bread lazyness had taken root in it's native soil. Not to worry, no doubt this effect has been seen in privileged groups, and specifically individuals of royal descent who seldom live up to expectations.

originally posted by: woodwardjnr
a reply to: Indigent
I don't think we can blame immigrants for this one, when many of the European immigrants from countries like Poland and other Eastern European countries speak and understand English better as a 2nd language than English kids who've had the benefit of free education and growing up in the culture all their lives.

I wouldn't say it's immigrant's fault per se - but maybe their presence is adding to a system that may have already been struggling. I'd say this is more of a problem of funding. And I'm known as one of the more Anti-Mass immigration Europe is currently experiencing. As people have pointed out, teaching children just to freaking learn English should probably take precedence over teaching children who speak it already the ins and outs . . . . #ty a choice as both of those may be.

I think most people should be in agreement on this one.

the other kids just work harder at it

simple