I have been reading friends’ group discussions, comments and stories. Good way of sharing stuff, I don’t deny. But also a good way to see how sloppy some English teachers can be with their own writing. I have been telling my students how it bugs me when people (students) are too lazy to dot their “i’s” and cross their “t’s” when they write, or to capitalize the pronoun “I” and the first letter of the first word in a sentence when they type, or too lazy to spell out the whole word of the pronoun YOU or the article ARE (the lazy version would be “u r”.)
And then to see that my fellow English teachers and lecturers doing the very same things that my and their students do that bug me…is simply eye-popping! (But uhum! Not in an impressive way, hello!) I mean, honestly…how much longer does it take to type three letters in YOU compared to U? I am not talking about sms-spelling here. That is a totally different topic, if not language.
But not just that. I am still in shock to see obvious grammatical mistakes made by two or three TESL lecturers who are now already working on their PhD’s! How can that be? With tenses all mixed-up and SVA all so ‘he-are-who & who-are-he’…what messages are being sent across? How do I trust these teachers to teach my children to use correct punctuation marks when their teachers don’t even use them? And how do I know why they don’t use them? Is it out of ‘comfort’ – do what they say, not what they do – because they know and students don’t? Or is it out of incompetence?
I give you this real sample, unedited…for instance:
“… So imagine the kind of breed i got. I wasn’t teaching most of the time, but rather babysitting. At form 3 some couldn’t hardly read nor write, jumping out of window ran out of class, having burger with both feet up on the desk, when i look into their school bags, i found knives, cards, stones u name it excepts books. I was warned in case of fight, don’t do anythg, call the police, not the discipline teacher!….”
If you are not able to spot the errors because you do not teach English, I forgive you. If you cannot spot the errors and you are an English teacher…I frown upon you. If you are an English teacher and you think the errors are a small matter, shame on you!
I am not making a fuss about code-switching either. It is fine. In fact, it is a natural thing to do as long as you are grammatically good in and comfortable with the two languages you are switching to-and-from and back-and-forth. No problem. Plus, if you make some grammar mistakes when speaking…there is always the element of on-the-spot repair. But imagine when you say and write things like:
“…Our students are like our own brother sisters whom we care dearly. It just in my case i just can’t tolerate teenagers or school going audience. I’m more comfortable teaching adults or uni students – not necessarily easier to handle but a matter of preference. Whether we do job hopping, shifting or even remaining in the same profession or be a housewife working freelance, we have a risk to take most importantly, calculated risk….”
or something as simple as:
“Did he ever in his life finished his book?”
It is so awful that I am awfully blown out of the water! To not re-read and edit your own writing…is plain slipshod. How do you test your students and how do you mark exam papers then? I can’t help but wonder if that is exactly what and how you teach your students. I wonder so much that I am beginning to marvel at how you even got your degree in the first place.
Eye I eye!
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