Why are Teacher's not teaching pupils how to spell?

Question

I am increasingly noticing a demise in the use of spelling a word correctly or even to make it sound correct. Why is this not being addressed by teaching staff?

Answer 1

you are a case in point - you've used an apostrophe to create a plural where none is necessary.
But I agree - an understanding of spelling and grammar is vital if people are to communicate well, make themselves understood and understand others. Why this is being neglected in schools I do not know. Employers are increasingly complaining that job applicants are semi-literate. It's not fair on the kids.

Answer 2

In UK the education system is slowly being dumned down so that people with low IQs can pass GCSEs and A-Levels. The proof of this is that modern day A-Level exam pupils are unable to complete an A-Level exam set in the 1950s. To be blunt, and even businesses will agree with me, there are a lot of uneducated 'thick' people leaving schools with a few worthless A-Levels whom the universities then have to work on to bring them up to 'standard'.

I left school in 1957 with no education what-so-ever, but with a modest degree of understanding of English and some knowledge of spelling. There is no spelling checker showing now, so I've no way of checking if my spelling is correct. My grammer is about average.

I strongly recommend that children read newspapers from an early age. Any newspaper will do at first, but build up to the quality rags, The Times, Guardian and Telegraph. The Daily Mail, although often referred to as a 'red-top' or 'tabloid' was actually a broadsheet in my youth. The English in the DM is of a very high standard.

Read everything and learn English as she is spoke and life's just a breeze. If a person can spell correctly, they are thought to be educated. If they cannot, then they should be emptying the trash.

Answer 3

I am a guidance counselor in New England and teachers (and guidance counselors) must pass the communication and literacy tests in my state prior to becoming teachers. That means they must know how to spell. A major problem we face is parents letting their children spend hours and hours and hours on their computers text messaging their friends. Also, I know that many parents do not sit down with students at night to help them with their homework or go over vocabulary or review spelling. Students no longer know how to type properly. They use spell check on their computers and think they do not need to proofread. My school system has only one computer per classroom due to low budgets. Therefore, the students must write everything out by hand and their spelling is corrected in all classes. One last comment...have you watched tv lately or seen advertisements? There are alternate spellings of words thrown at our kids that aren't even correct.

Answer 4

We are! Teaching spelling is now concentrated around phonics (sounding out each word) in the infants. Spelling is also taught regularly in the juniors where spelling rules are taught. We don't correct every spelling as this is disheartening for children (remember all that red pen?), we concentrate on one or two rules at a time and we correct only the rules we're focusing on. This helps children as they focus on one or two things at a time rather than have to cope with everything all at one time.

Answer 5

In Florida, there is the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Aptitute test) that students must pass at different grade levels to progress to the next grade. Many parents complain that the school districts focus too much on this test and not enough on well rounded basic educations- because schools are graded and ranked according to how their students perform on these tests. My sister in law is a 5th grade teacher in Texas and she seems to feel creativity and self expression out weigh things like spelling, so obviously there are many reasons. And parents too don't often take the time to review their kid's homework, or insist they read instead of watching the boob tube.

Answer 6

Teachers have been told not to mark too much on a student's paper because it might "hurt their self-esteem." Pretty much the only time they are supposed to take points off for spelling or grammar mistakes is if the paper is a spelling test or a grammar exercise. Otherwise, they are supposed to grade the work "holistically", which means to grade based on the ideas in the paper, not the mechanics.
Personally, I think kids' self-esteem will be hurt more when they can't get hired for a decent job or get into college because they can't spell, but it's not up to me.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

Who knows it seems to be more so the parents responsibility these days to make sure their kids are learning in school. My nephew is 10 and he does not write or spell at his age group he says he doesn't like to so his teachers have an aide do his writing for him! I personally think that most teachers are overworked and underpaid and that there is too much focus on children's feelings but what do I know? I have a 5 yr old and you can bet that she will be able to spell and write legibly she will also know what a library is used for!

Answer 9

I dis-agree, my seven year old daughter had key-words that she had to spell for Key Stage 1, and on-top of this she has seven new words to spell every week and is tested on these every Friday! The words she spells are quite difficult really, certainly for most people on here and certainly more than I could have spelt at seven (and I was not exactly back-ward.......that came on later, lol).
I had that email too, vixen; weren't we all lucky to survive!

Answer 10

It's not the teachers fault. It's people being in too big a rush to take the time to spell check and so many of them use text messaging ...