Does it make you worry when you see School Heads talking on TV and making really obvious grammatical errors?

Question

.. I would really worry in this day and age if I had kids. I think it's shocking.

Answer 1

It is very worrying. And the newsreaders to it to. I have been known to shout at them. But on a lighter note - when I was at school the teacher wrote a comment on my friend's homework that none of us could decipher. So she went and asked her what she had written. It turned out that teach was saying how untidy my friend's handwriting was.

Answer 2

No what bothers me is when children say "I runded" and no-one says "No you ran" in case it affects the child's self esteem!!!

Answer 3

It really worries and annoys me.

I find it incredible that people are getting A levels and degrees when they can't spell even the simplest of words.

Answer 4

It doesn't make me worry - it makes me angry as it does when I hear similar errors on radio and tv news bulletins. We shouldn't expect  DJ's and "celebs" taking part in (for example) cookery programmes to speak the Queen's English, after all most of them are poorly educated, but newsreaders are trained (graduate) journalists and should not be making such basic errors as, "A group of people are protesting about........ ."  As the word "group" is singular then the verb should be "is" not "are".   "A group  IS ............ "

Sadly, I can tell you that many younger teachers were themselves taught  at a time when grammar errors were not corrected as it "destroyed the creative flow" of the work. In the same way spellings were not corrected and, as a result, many teachers have difficulties spelling words such as committee, desperate, secretary, accommodation, etc, etc. If we are to return to some semblance of good standards in English, both spoken and written, we have to have a root and branch retraining of (especially) primary school teachers. Sadly, too, many of them also lack real mathematical knowledge needed to deliver the national curriculum.

Answer 5

No, not really. . . I'm not very good at catching all the obvious grammar errors in what I say in a timely fashion, either.  I tend to really annoy people with lesser-known grammatical rules when it comes to written English, though.  I don't lack the knowledge; I sometimes just lack the ability to apply the knowledge in real time.

I'm much more concerned about the obvious grammatical errors on my local news.  Sure, they're journalists and not English majors. . . but wouldn't proper grammar be a good thing if your job is largely about communicating information?  My job involves a bunch of fun math and science first before I have to communicate much information, and I somehow seem to have a better grasp of basic grammar than some of the local talking heads who tell us about current events for a living.  

I gave up hope after the day when I saw a set of very obvious "you know. . . all things that end in 's' really don't need an apostrophe" plurals on some of their bullet-point slides.  (sigh)

Answer 6

Yes it does. I teach, and the more annoying thing is when letters are sent home from schools, universities and the local government with really obvious spelling and grammatical errors. Another thing that annoys me is when they make up words to sound important and then comment that parents haven't responded, or 'don't have good English'.