I haven’t really wanted to come across as a jerk or an ass, which is why I am writing this here instead of in comments. I also have started to wonder if anyone looks at any of my blogs anyway, and I guess this might let me find out. English Composition 121 is in fact a college level class, and as anyone should be able to surmise, it requires writing. When I see writing that only has two upper case letters in the whole thing, I can’t help but wonder what the hell is going on in schools today. How about using “defiantly” in place of “definitely”? It can work, but it says something entirely different from what is supposed to be conveyed in the writing. There’s also “one” instead of “won”, and “by” in place of “buy”. Then there is the use of, or should I say lack of, punctuation; a paragraph that consists of two sentences when it should have four along with some more commas. I can admit I’m no master of writing skills and make mistakes as well, that is one of the two reasons I am taking this class.
As far as I am concerned, the education system has failed you, you are now walking around with a piece of paper that says “I know and understand at least the basics, if not more”. That piece of paper, in truth, was required for you to take this class and be in a “college level” institution. You may read the quotation marks on “college level” as me saying Red Rocks is not such an institution or its faculty could do better when looking for a job. That is not the case in any way, what I am trying to say is “college level” seems to have dropped a few levels. But, don’t think I’m letting you off so easy. I may have a couple years on many of you, but not that many. I don’t see how there is any way you could possibly not know how to form a sentence or use the shift key. I also can’t figure out why you wouldn’t use a word document to type it out, correct it, re-read it, fix what the spell check didn’t find and then copy and paste it into the blog. By that simple action alone you would start learning spelling and punctuation, it won’t always replace the wrong word you used with the correct one, but that’s why you look it over again!
If you see mistakes on what I write, please let me know. When I post something and there are misspelled words or grammatical errors, I feel embarrassed, and most of the posts I make are read by people who will never meet me or even see me. As I said, I’m not without fault, but I sure as hell try to better myself.
I know it isn’t really fair for me to point out all that is wrong and ask “why aren’t people doing better?” when in fact there are plenty who do well. A few of them I read and think that in future text books I am going to see that story as an example of what the times were like “back then”. I can tell pretty easily who takes pride in their work and who either doesn’t care or needs a lot of help. So to those of you who do well, keep up the good work; those of you who have a hard time with it all… you’re killing me here.
5 comments:
Thanks for calling me out. I was hoping to get a few good responses to that, but it seems pointless now.
I like you writing style and agree with the content of this entry, to an extent. Academic standards have dropped in a sense. At the same time you have to look at the other side. Theres the kids like me. I havn't had an English or writing class in well over 4years. Depressing, right? You have to start somewhere and this is it for me. The point of writing our blogs was to develop and improve. Hopefully we'll see some change as we get further into the semester.
Have you ever considered being an english teacher? You would be good at it! I like the way you wrote this, and agree with you to an extent. It is frustrating to me when I'm sitting in math and people keep asking questions about the simplest things. It makes me want to tell them to take an easier coarse. However i am not a very good speller and even though i try i just am not that good at it. I do take pride in most of my writing. I try and take every promt from an angle that i can enjoy!
And to answer your question... i read your blog and Felicia did too, so maybe you would be surpised how many people actually read it!
Amen.
I can hardly read some of these because its just a line of words with no grammatical context. I know my writing is not perfect, but I do try to use capitalization and punctuation in my blogs... I use spell check too.
I understand what you are talking about. But there are also factors you have to consider when it comes to writing. A perfect example is my generation, everything is about text messageing. It is becoming almost like a new language and tons of people write how they text now. And in schools now days it seems like most teachers don't teach worth shit any more, they just pass people so they don't have to worry about them any more. Or( and this is what I have experianced) teachers don't want to bother to take the extra time to acually talk over the material that may not be understood.
A 'half empty' kinda way to look at it but at the same time very true in some ways. It would be hard for the U.S. to improve the level of education over night or ASAP without being unjunst. I think it needs to be stepped up in patches so as to carve a more literate society even though I, myself, have room for improvement in areas. But who doesn't? On the same note, I also believe in being the best you have potential to be, like you do. The military and other conditions of your life have trained you well in that aspect, this is evident. I wonder sometimes if you enjoy your everyday life because your so serious, but am sure you do! I marked from your blog page that we have multiple interests in common, lets go shootin' sometime?
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