DemonLlama
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2000
- Messages
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(Cackle, cackle, cackle)
The sound above is an English instructor (in COLLEGE -- note the previous poster's caps on this word) enjoying this thread. I have often spent much longer than I had time to spend proofreading my posts because a person in my profession is allowed far less leeway in such matters.
However, as one of the earlier posters pointed out, the difference in typing errors versus erroneous word choice is significant. I, too, see a difference in the inability to recognize the verb "assitance" from the noun "assistants." This is akin to the oft corrected use of "to" for "too" or "their" for "there." My students have not had enough practice reading and writing to know that the words they frequently use in conversation are hominems of the correct word.
In my writing classes, we have peer review sessions on editing that require the reader to begin with the last sentence and progress through the essay one sentence at a time, backwards. So many sentence fragments, run-ons, and comma splices have been avoided this way! But unless the reader has enough practice reading and writing, he or she can easily miss the hominem errors while looking at the whole sentence. I've seen it happen all too often.
To conclude: I <B>would</B> worry if the principal of the school had not had enough practice reading and writing. Perhaps it was an innocent mistake, perhaps it was a secretary's mistake, or perhaps it points to the deep divide between our ideology of education and its actual practice.
The sound above is an English instructor (in COLLEGE -- note the previous poster's caps on this word) enjoying this thread. I have often spent much longer than I had time to spend proofreading my posts because a person in my profession is allowed far less leeway in such matters.
However, as one of the earlier posters pointed out, the difference in typing errors versus erroneous word choice is significant. I, too, see a difference in the inability to recognize the verb "assitance" from the noun "assistants." This is akin to the oft corrected use of "to" for "too" or "their" for "there." My students have not had enough practice reading and writing to know that the words they frequently use in conversation are hominems of the correct word.
In my writing classes, we have peer review sessions on editing that require the reader to begin with the last sentence and progress through the essay one sentence at a time, backwards. So many sentence fragments, run-ons, and comma splices have been avoided this way! But unless the reader has enough practice reading and writing, he or she can easily miss the hominem errors while looking at the whole sentence. I've seen it happen all too often.
To conclude: I <B>would</B> worry if the principal of the school had not had enough practice reading and writing. Perhaps it was an innocent mistake, perhaps it was a secretary's mistake, or perhaps it points to the deep divide between our ideology of education and its actual practice.
See, even college English instructors who do proofread are human(unless Im totally wrong here, which is always a possibility 
I spelled the word incorrectly. 
I do have to say though, I don't live in a glass house. I make a lot of mistakes and own up to them!! I didn't like how the principal responded to her. He sounded very arrogant just from that one paragraph.
