The need for skills support for students- a worrying development.

tr3mor

fatnan wrote:

I totally agree that many students expect to be spoon-fed and show appalling lack of initiative in helping themselves. Surely, by the time a student is at HE level the lecturer should be able to assume the student has at least some knowledge of literacy and numeracy. Sadly, this is often not the case.

Well if Mr Blair didn't insist on sending 50% of 18 year olds to uni this wouldn't be a problem. Only 47% of students get 5 A*-Cs at GCSE with Maths and English. How are all these people supposed to go to uni?

Universities need to go backwards and only take the top 20% of students, and even them do entry exams to get rid of the trash that work hundreds of hours every week but have no common sense at all!

studentphil

cupid_stunt wrote:

Maybe you could contact the library, or the head of your department and ask that they liaise with each other with regards to the library stocking all the core texts and papers and recommend reading on the reading lists and having at least one reference copy that cannot be taken out. I understand it can get so frustrating and it's the library's fault. And why should you have to do this anyway? They should do this as standard cos it's just common sense.

Or maybe you could get sneaky and regularly pop along to see lecturers for feedback on an essay or something, and while you're there try to find out upcoming projects and get all the books first!

You can request the items if they're out and they then have to be returned within 2 days or soething. But this doesn't help if 10 people are on the list waiting for it and you only have 2 weeks to do the essay.

I have requested books before and by the time they come the essay deadline is past. To have any chance of getting hold of any of the books on the reading list you have to run the library after the 1st lecture of the course.

Sometimes you can get away with using similar books, but it is a pain when you must have that exact book.

pboae

tr3mor wrote:

Well if Mr Blair didn't insist on sending 50% of 18 year olds to uni this wouldn't be a problem. Only 47% of students get 5 A*-Cs at GCSE with Maths and English. How are all these people supposed to go to uni?

I don't think that is a major issue. I used to tutor/mark for a degree course that required AAB at A-Level, plus good GCSE grades, and still a sizeable minority were essentially illiterate. I was not permitted to mark them down for grammar or spelling. Leaving me to try and mark essays that were several pages long and just a stream of consciousness, not a single punctuation mark, capital letter or paragraph over say 3 pages.

I think I'd rather have them written in txt spk, at least they would be shorter, and perhaps ramble less.

Karnam

i think we're being a bit unfair here.

i was once told by a tutor of my english degree that the average essay takes 3 -4 hours to mark and if its a very good one can take 6 hours. considering the HUGE numbers on my course (annual intake of around 1000) this is a sizable amount of time to simply get one's head around the in depth arguments, philsophy and thinking behind an essays argument, let alone consider things like plagerism and decent background reading and understanding.

personally i check my grammer and spelling at essay time extremely throughly, as well as sentence structure as it can affect the meaning of what you are trying to say. you never know what goes on sub conciously in an examiner's mind when they register grammatical mistakes. but i can understand how it should not matter at times (like examinations) as this is degree level, you dont need a doctorate in the highest esteem in his field to tell you how to spell. its more important to learn from the degree not demonstrate that you had a decent secondary education.

the degree content is the number one concern, which is why i also dont think awarding grades based on attendence is helpful either.

tr3mor

It all comes out in the wash anyway. Most companies searching for employees chuck any applications with bad spelling or grammar in the bin without bothering to read them. They get hundreds of applications at a time and HR will crudely filter it before reading the best.

lellie

yeah this is true - my dad was filtering applications for a job the other day - he was getting me to proof read them - if they weren't perfect they were to go straight in the rejection pile.

Compound_2

lisa_75 wrote:

I recently proof read a friends essay and it was littered with grammatical and spelling errors (such as using there instead of their and putting the word "and" at the beginning of a sentence). This girl is in her 3rd year and has been averaging 58%. I am amazed that she is allowed to get an “average" mark when her grammar is clearly well below average.

It is not wrong to begin a sentence with a conjuction such as and or but. The practice is common in literature. And it can be effective.

Meatballs

lisa_75 wrote:

I recently proof read a friends essay and it was littered with grammatical and spelling errors (such as using there instead of their and putting the word "and" at the beginning of a sentence). This girl is in her 3rd year and has been averaging 58%. I am amazed that she is allowed to get an “average" mark when her grammar is clearly well below average. Even my 10 year old knows the difference between their and there!

I think if the same proportion of students came to uni from the 'good old days' you would find similar problems or worse.

My girlfriend (who has just left the room ) was a known dyslexic and dyspraxic at school, but wants to do it alone at uni. She came 1% below a first on her essay due to 'silly mistakes and grammar'. I've been trying to get her to play the system, everyone else is!

Ken-Dodds-Hairy-Knodule

lisa_75 wrote:

One 20 year old girl on my course did not know when the 2nd world war started.

I assume this was/is a history course?

tr3mor

Compound wrote:

It is not wrong to begin a sentence with a conjuction such as and or but. The practice is common in literature. And it can be effective.

It depends what you're writing. An academic essay should be more rigorous in obeying the rules of grammar. Authors can use artistic licence if they wish.

Ken-Dodds-Hairy-Knodule wrote:

I assume this was/is a history course?

What does it matter if it was a history course? Anyone in Britain who doesn't know when the 2nd World War started is obviously a vacuous self obsessed moron!