The Language Barrier, Part 2: Instructors

You know, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised about today’s high school graduates and their mastery of the English language.  It appears there is good reason for their ignorance or apathy, whichever it is.  If you can’t expect good grammar and spelling from instructors, how can you expect it of students.

Every semester, hundreds of thousands of instructors at colleges and universities across the nation and around the world prepare and distribute well-prepared course documents that set the guidelines and standard by which their students will be measured.  So, why in hell would some instructors not even use “Spell Check”? 

I’m not kidding.  Did they not see the little, red, squiggly line that appeared as they were typing these documents?  Of the last four courses I took, I did not have one syllabus that did not include spelling, capitalization or grammatical errors.  I’m not talking about one minor mistake, but rather enough that I, as the student, began to question the credibility of my instructors.

On top of this, when I called my instructors’ attention to their mistakes, not a single one sent out a corrections, but three of the four did respond to my emails.  Of course, their emails were worse than their documents.

Maybe, I’m asking too much.  Should I really expect instructors to set an example for their students?  Should I really expect instructors to care about their credibility with their students?  Should I really expect anyone to use something as cumbersome as “Spell Check”?

I think so.  I think instructors should exhibit the traits that they expect from their students and I think those expectations should be high.  After all, we’re paying to learn and don’t we learn more from actions than from words?

The Language Barrier, Part 1: Students

One thing I discovered going back to college was that most current students, straight out of high school, don’t understand English.  For that matter, most of them don’t use it.  As part of one course that I took online, students would post discussions to an online discussion board.  Postings to this board were graded as part of the course, and the instructor made it clear that grammar and spelling would be scrutinized.

I have two daughters.  One is 16 and one just turned 20 and is currently in college.  Based on this, I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of how students communicated.  To my relief, my daughters must be the exception to the rule.

I guess that’s why it surprised me to read other students’ posts to the discussion board.  If the instructor asked for a 300-word response, not including restating the topic, at least half of the posts would be one or two lines restating the topic.  Another twenty-five percent would meet the 300-word requirement … restating the topic.  Amazingly to me, around thirty percent of all submissions would be written in “text message” format.  OMG! WRUD!

It kills me!  I don’t claim to be an expert on grammar and spelling, but I would be generous to say that twenty-five percent of all student posts to that board were college level responses.

Now, I know that many adults text as much (or more) than their teenage counterparts.  I just hope that if you are considering going back to college, you know the difference between an assignment and a “tweet”.

Back to College

Going back to college at age 42 has been interesting to say the least.  Like a lot of folks, I went to college straight out of high school, but did not complete my degree.  The farther along I was in life, the more I regretted it.  Though I did well for myself without a degree, there was always that part of me that wished I had finished.

My job paid me six figures, but required about 60 hours of my time each week.  Both of my daughters were active and involved in sports and school, taking up most of my remaining time.  I thought about trying to squeeze some classes in somewhere, but I just never got around to it.

Finally, at age 42, I decided to do something about it.  I put aside some money, I quit my job and I enrolled in my local college.  This site will share some of my thoughts and observations from doing so.