I consider most misspelled words symptomatic of a deeper cultural problem: the lack of reading in our society. Most students who choose to come to a community college rather than a four-year institution have not been reading on a regular basis. Chances are the misspelling traditional students have not had a good prior educational experience, whether it was from their own lack of performance or the fault of the school they attended. Many of our older students find themselves with the same issues because they have not been in school for quite a while and have also not been reading.What is the result? A lack of exposure to our most common words, and a lack of exposure to seeing words in print. For example, when Spell Checker gives students options for an erroneous version of "definite," many students will choose the option "defiant" without sounding out the word to recognize the error of their decision. This also leads to the humorous error of writing about their "collage" experience here at Yavapai College.
Then there is the issue of open, hyphenated, and closed compound words. Students are not used to seeing the printed forms of compounds. Nowadays becomes "now a days"; somewhere becomes "some where"; and anyone becomes "any one." I have seen high school as "High School," "highschool," and "high School." Air-conditioned becomes "airconditioned" or "air conditioned." I have even seen "with out" used in papers.
When in doubt, sound it out, right? Based upon this premise, students will write "would of" instead of "would have." They actually don't know this is an error because they are not used to seeing these words on a page.
Accompanying the spelling errors is a use of the vernacular or cultural dialect in writing. Here is where I must confess to my own grammatical prejudices as I teach my students about what will and won't be allowed in their essays. "To where" drives me nuts! "He studied to where he fell asleep at his desk." And then there is the infamous "He asked where Suzie was at." Definitely a cause for red ink! This also leads to "try and see" instead of "try to see." All of these expressions have become a common part of our student's oral communication, but they are not an accepted part of academic communication...yet.
These trends lead me to an ongoing discussion with my students about the importance of reading for pleasure. The errors I have used as examples in this blog will probably not go away no matter how often the errors are corrected by instructors. They won't go away until our students begin to read on a regular basis, and this won't happen until they discover the joy of reading. As an institution, we could return to using the same kinds of spelling drills and grammar practice sheets in ENG 101 that so many teachers used during elementary school, but we are dealing with a different issue. Those drills exposed students to the norms of our written language that were reinforced as they read. Somewhere around the time of junior high or middle school, most students stop reading. When they reach an age filled with more choices for using their time (sports, TV, video games), most reading assignments become an avoided chore, a boring requirement, something to be avoided. This is when all that earlier learning begins to disappear because the students are no long immersed in our written language in the form of engaging stories. Many of the students we see in our classes made it through high school without ever reading a book. Ah, the blessings of electronic Spark Notes!
There is hope. Yes, many of our students arrive at college with poor spelling skills and a misunderstanding of when vernacular is appropriate. However, the more they read for our classes, the more they will relearn what they have lost from misuse. To encourage students to do the reading assignments, we need to help them get the most out of their books, and we need to make those reading assignments count. I have heard some say that their instructor doesn't require the textbook: I have heard others complain about the difficulty of the textbooks they are trying to read. I would challenge us all to teach our students how to read our textbooks. Our students don't know that scientists and historians don't approach reading in the same way. They assume that every textbook gets read the same way, in the same amount of time, and in the same night before the due date with the same skills that got them through high school. All of us need to take a few minutes out of class to explain how we would read our textbooks. What reading techniques work best with your texts?
We can even speed up the process of relearning spelling and removing the oral dialect if we can get our students to enjoy reading. We should be sharing our favorite books in our classes. The students are inundated with trailers for upcoming movies, teasers to get them to buy a ticket and a bag of popcorn. We should be creating quick, one-minute teasers about books in our fields that might be interesting to our students. This summer I read The Origin of Feces by David Waltner-Toews (not exactly in my field of study). I have shared the book with every one of my classes this semester. The title alone is the best trailer for the book, and when the students hear that there is an entire chapter devoted to the discussion of the most appropriate word to use when talking about this "taboo" subject, I have them hooked (You will have to read the book to find out what he concludes.). The author approaches an ignored part of every ecosystem that is now affecting us globally in such a humorous way that I think every student could enjoy it and learn from it. I may not have a single students take me up on the recommendation, but all of them will have heard about my delight in reading this book. If they are hearing the same message from all of their instructors...who know what might happen? A revolution of reading?
The situation is not hopeless, but it does require patience. Rather than dumbing down and giving up on reading assignments, we need to support our students in their efforts to learn how to take full advantage of this unfamiliar college culture based so much upon the written word. And we need to inspire the joy of reading.
Image from (www. cafepress.com)
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