Monday 15 November 2010

Tweet of the day - 15 Nov 2010

This comes from the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg:
"Nick Gibb says govt has asked qualifications authority to look at taking spelling, grammar and punctuation into account in GCSE exams"
Of course, the obvious question that anyone with a clue about real life will ask is: why weren't these already being taken into account? Just about all of life within our complex society, and especially when one is in employment, is based around the need for effective communication, much of it via the written word.

Even allowing for the licence of texting shorthand and the like, this does not mean that there is any excuse for neglecting the essentials of language-based written communication, such as spelling, grammar and punctuation. Our adult life has to be built on a solid foundation, and good written (and, ideally, spoken) English is an essential part of that foundation in this country.

Who could possibly ever have thought that ignoring these important constituent components of that foundation was the right way to go? Oh yes, of course: dumb-it-all-down lefties within the previous Labour government, so that all might have prizes and our exam qualifications ended up significantly devalued!

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