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<p>It will also kill you if your’re applying for a postdoc research position at a Harvard Med facility. My dtr is culling applications. She was instructed by the researcher she reports to to “trash” all applications with poor English and writing.</p>
<p>This makes me crazy and I have purposefully taken the most rigorous writing classes available to me to avoid it. My grammar is still not great, I have a physical disability that causes me great pain when I type so unless it’s something egregious I tend not to go back and fix errors unless it’s a professional work or a school assignment, but I KNOW the errors are there because I have been better educated than that. There was a time where my school district decided they wanted to put more emphasis on writing skills to prepare students for college, but then they changed their minds and said it wasn’t important. Even in college thus far I have only been graded on content and the effectiveness of my form, I have brought papers back to my professors and said, “no, really, please correct this for me.” </p>
<p>Unless you have a learning disability honestly all you have to do to learn good spelling and good enough grammar to get by is READ. I scored in the 99th percentile in the spelling portion of my learning disability screening and at that point I’d never done a damn thing but read. There is no excuse for how uneducated some people my age are. There are kids who have had every advantage in life who cannot write or speak as well as the students who have had nothing, it’s just absurd. The schools need to be better, but the parents of a lot of these kids needed to emphasize education a little more with their young ones, too. Everyone here seems to be the type of parent to go above and beyond, but too many assume that the the school is doing their job and nothing more is needed, and that couldn’t be more untrue. New readers don’t refuse to read because they think it’s dorky, that’s not until they’re older. The only reason young kids won’t read is difficulty, which requires support, or lack of access or encouragement. That’s where the parents need to come in at home. Appreciating literacy isn’t something that most people grow out of.</p>
<p>When I taught (chemistry, but it doesn’t really matter), it became very clear to me very fast that most poor spellers cannot help it. People who cannot spell simply do not see their errors. I’m not talking about the occasional misspelling; I’m talking about serious problems. As a result, whenever I saw certain kinds of misspellings, I would go check with the special education department to find out more about the student’s learning issues. Without exception, they all had learning disabilities.</p>
<p>As a secondary issue, spelling is definitely related to brain function; when my husband had chemo, the only manifestation of “chemo brain” was that he lost the ability to spell “separate” and “parallel”.</p>
<p>Maybe slightly off topic but I wonder if application readers look at perfect essays and low English test scores and, sensing the disconnect, disregard the well written essays?</p>
<p>speihei, I’ve wondered the same thing and hope to see some informed responses to your question.</p>
<p>our district is moving to a new curriculum for language that starts with the words, what they mean, how they are spelled. Kids wil sort out cards with similar sounding words and work out the rule that makes them fall into different catagories… suffix able vs ible, for example. It’s a huge problem cents two many words are spelt the same.
I confess to being a product of hippie teachers who never taught grammer, spelling or other rules. I just copied books!</p>
<p>It is entirely possible to improve a poor speller’s spelling by taking a couple of diagnostic tests and honing in on the problem areas, and then working on those. </p>
<p>Clumsy grammar takes a bit more work but that, too, can be done. It’s best done in small classes and it requires dedication, high expectations, and real consequences if it isn’t done.</p>
<p>Years ago I regularly taught such classes at a small college primarily attended by aspiring teachers. Students could not move from Sophomore to Junior year without demonstrating proficiency in spelling, grammar, and reading comprehension. They learned to spell and avoid common grammatical mistakes. They knew that if they didn’t pass the tests, they couldn’t become student teachers. The tests were instituted because the schools and parents where the students went off to work complained if students sent papers back with such errors.</p>
<p>In generally, I believe that people will only take care with matters of spelling and grammar if they understand that there are serious, real consequences if they continue to ignore spelling and grammar problems, such as when they have to write letters to apply for jobs. Until then, students will continue to hand in papers and write posts that have egregious numbers of errors.</p>
<p>I don’t know why people do not look up words in the dictionary, re read their work, or just acknowledge they are bad spellers and correct themselves.</p>
<p>To answer the question: YES - Poor spelling can absolutely derail a career! Some careers more than others. In college I used to carry around a little book “20,000 words” It was much smaller than a dictionary, but so helpful for quick spelling verifications. I buy all my children their own, age-appropriate dictionary - then buy them more advanced ones as they get older.</p>
<p>This may sound terrible out of it’s context, but I once broke up with someone when I was in my early 20s because he would write me love notes and letters that looked like they were written by a 4th grader. The spelling and grammar errors were terrible and distracting and they diminished the notes. There was such a difference in our education levels and aspirations that his notes were “the nail in the coffin.” (Don’t flame on me, I was young-)</p>
<p>I’m sure there are learning disabilities, etc., but many, many careers require acceptable spelling & writing skills. By the way – call me a dinosaur, but I think penmanship matters too! My 15-year old is constantly hearing from me to pay more attention to his penmanship! I had to practice penmanship at school- both “printing” and “cursive” back in the 60’s and 70’s. Nice, legible writing is important no matter how vital and pervasive computers are.</p>
<p>I’ll repeat it: when people’s brains don’t function “normally” they have trouble spelling. Learning disabilities are often a cause of poor spelling.</p>
<p>Of course, our irregular grammar and phonetics don’t help either. The rate of learning disability is far lower in countries with regularized spelling, like Italy.</p>
<p>dmd77, my daughter is dyslexic, and I see a clear difference between her across-the-board spelling difficulties and those of an otherwise capable person who simply doesn’t care to think about the difference between “its” and “it’s”, etc. I’m pretty sure we’re talking here about people who use poor spelling and grammar out of laziness or disregard, rather than those who genuinely can’t distinguish the details.</p>
<p>I’ll use the president of my company as an example. He uses the word “irregardless” daily. This man is bright, a good manager, generally a good writer, with an MBA from a top school. He’s no dolt, but when every time he says “irregardless”, I think he sounds like a moron, as do a number of my colleagues.</p>
<p>And what does this tell me about him? Well, if I must draw a conclusion, it would be that he clings to what he thinks he knows rather than embracing the obvious flaw in his speech and correcting it. Is that a fair conclusion? I really don’t know, but that’s not the point. The point is that an intelligent person with no particular mental shortcoming ought to know better, and if he doesn’t, he will be judged. It’s just a fact of the real world.</p>
<p>I would argue that penmanship isn’t that important in this day and age in most circumstances. I have a neuropathy and it has actually never been a problem for me once I got to high school and they stopped forcing me to attempt to write legibly even though it was intensely painful and let me type instead. Short of signing for things I don’t know if I’ve picked up a pen in years, other than to scrawl a note or something at work.</p>
<p>Granted I am a different case than someone without my medical condition, however “neuropathy” has not seemed to be a specific enough diagnosis to gain me any kind of a disability status so I generally don’t even tell people about it. My school knows, I tried to get accommodation for the writing portion of the ACT but was denied, haven’t tried anything like that since. Employers have never known.</p>
<p>Our careers are determined to a major extent by our individual skill sets. Someone with a learning disability that affects spelling - hence their written communication skills – would most likely not be an Editor, Secretary, Proof Reader, etc. Any career that requires written correspondence would likely be “derailed.” This is not a judgment on anyone’s worth. I could never be an artist or a singer or seamstress or math teacher. They aren’t my strengths and I lack the skills required.</p>
<p>mantori.suzuki: of course there is a difference between laziness and dyslexia. The point I was trying to make–apparently unsuccessfully–is that most people who can’t spell are NOT lazy. They can “try” all they want, but it doesn’t make a difference. </p>
<p>As for “irregardless”, it appears to be a regionalism. The president of your company surely has not been held back by his use of the word (unless you want to argue that the company would be even bigger if he didn’t use it?). My suggestion to you would be to stop assuming that non-standard regionalisms make you a moron. </p>
<p>(And just to tweak a few feathers out there: W sure wasn’t held back by his inability to pronounce “nuclear” correctly.)</p>
<p>True, there are many examples of people who do quite well in spite of all kinds of shortcomings, verbal skills included.</p>
<p>And I don’t think the president of my company is a moron. I only think he sounds like one when he says “irregardless” (and it seems to be his favorite word). I actually really like and respect the guy. I still cringe, though. Perhaps oversensitivity to such things is my own shortcoming.</p>
<p>I don’t think Dubya is actually a moron, either, but…well, you know, whole different conversation. Don’t want to derail the thread. :)</p>