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[Guest]

Someone just sent this to me -

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."


Strange, but it does partially explain DurtGurl's dubious success despite her obvious - um - shortcomings.


( I need a drink)

 

[Jenny _S]

Someone just sent this to me -

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."


Strange, but it does partially explain DurtGurl's dubious success despite her obvious - um - shortcomings.


( I need a drink)

That was in a thread in the GB started by The Heretic. I couldn't read it either.

 

[raphy]

I always suspected those cambridge fools spent far too long swanning around in the groves of academe and not enough time actually in the real world.

I hope that survey really isn't true - The great unwashed masses might start believing that Cambridge University is condoning illiteracy.....

Raph, wondering where he gets one of those Ivory Towers.

 

[Guest]

Raph, wondering where he gets one of those Ivory Towers.

Is that some new kind of vibrator?



Jenny - I must have missed that one in the GB. (Lately I seem to just hang out with all the writers of smut located here.)

 

[Jenny _S]

Is that some new kind of vibrator?



Jenny - I must have missed that one in the GB. (Lately I seem to just hang out with all the writers of smut located here.)

Good for you, Sarah
The GB is ok if you don't mind insults, humilation and obnoxiouls behavior. I post there occasionally. But the AH is home.

 

[Guest]

But the AH is home.

Yes. We need each other at AH 'cause no one else understands us!


*sob*


Oh, wait. Except for the occasional feedback of "Your story made me so hot - wanna cyber fuck?"



Then it's OK.

 

[raphy]

Is that some new kind of vibrator?

Anything is possible......

 

[Wantonica]

Dam I m gunna kic there buts in colege. Yeha.

Shrugs,
Wantonica

 

[dr_mabeuse]

They're not condoning misspellings. They're talking about the way we actually read, and they're right.

Once we learn the basics of reading, we immediately stop using them and start to read by a different mechanism altogether. We start recognizing words by their 'shape' and context without having to sound it out every time we see it, and from there we go on to recognizing and digesting whole chunks of sentences at one time. Only if there's some really unexpected construction do you have to slow down and go back and read it word by word, and only if it's a totally new word do you have to go back and look at it and try to make sense of it phonetically.

This may all seem like academic navel-contemplation, but there are millions and millions of dollars spent each year on reading programs for schools, and every few years some new method comes into vogue and the schools all have to buy new books and retrain their teachers. Unless you've been in education you can't believe the time and effort and $$$ that goes into reading research. Up to now it's all been BS in my view, simply because no one recognized that learning to read and reading are two different things.

An example: That last big fad around here was called "whole language" reading. Reserachers had found that good readers read as I said above, in big chunks of sentences. So they decided that's how they should teach kids to read, by 'recognizing' whole words by shape and context. So they de-emphasized spelling to the point that some teachers wouldn't even tell the kids how to spell a word when the kids asked.

Well kids aren't stupid. They knew that their papers were full of errors, and they were embarrassed and frustrated whenever they had to write anything. The whole thing ended up as a big fiasco, and after some years they scrapped the program, and now I don't know what method they're using.

I was going to teach English a few years ago, and as part of an Ed course I was taking, we had to help kids studying for their High School Equivalency exam (GED). None of the kids in my class had ever been taught any grammar or punctuation--and I mean any--on the grounds that 'rules' would inhibit their natural creativity when it came to expressing themselves. (This was the height of the 'delf-esteem' movement in edication, where all answers were equally good.)

How in the world can you teach a room full of students to use commas when they don't even know a noun from a verb? And do it in three classroom sessions? You just can't. It was hopeless.

I don't know what happened to these kids when they took the test. I was so alarmed and disgusted, I dropped out too and never did teach.

Anyhow, that's my rant on the subject.


---dr.M.

 

[snooper]

Strange, but it does partially explain DurtGurl's dubious success despite her obvious - um - shortcomings.

Thet's odd. I thought DurtGurl was famous for her long, deep and continuous cummings (size e.e doubtless).

 

[Guest]

I agree w/Mab.; I read the sample easily, seemingly by over-'sight' of the odd spellings, the words came across to me as shapes nearly but I recognized them.

I was fortunate to be able to enroll my sons in Montessori pre-schools where they learned to read at age three. The system uses touch, e.g., the letters of the alphabet are cut out of sandpaper and the students trace ('feel') the letters as they speak them. (Obviously that's just the superficial version of part of the system.)

I especially recall the pride my sons took in learning at that school, it served them well after I divorced and could no longer afford private schools for them.

Perdita

 

[raphy]

Oh, I fully agree with Dr M, but the problem as I see it is that a study like that will make the unwashed masses think it's okay to be illiterate...

I said that already, didn't I ..

Raph, repeating himself now..

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Oh, I fully agree with Dr M, but the problem as I see it is that a study like that will make the unwashed masses think it's okay to be illiterate...

Actually, I don't think it will. The unwashed, illiterate masses don't mispell like this. They don't know which letters go in the middle, scrambled or not. What they generaly do is use some sort of distorted phonetic approximation, which makes it even harder to understand, combined with severe deficiencies in phrasal structure, grammar and punctuation, like drMab was saying. Not the same thing at all.

 

[oggbashan]

My wife's favourite rant is about the lack of knowledge of English grammar. She is a retired language teacher. Before she could teach French or German to a new class, she had to spend most of a term teaching them English grammar in between the few foreign phrases that they didn't need grammar for.

She isn't too happy with my grammar either but what could she expect from a geographer?

Og

 

[sweetnpetite]

I got this too. I had no problem reading it. I thought it was great! Very funny. They should use it as some kind of test in elementary school, to see who's gotten past the 'sound it out' phase and who hasn't.

ps it doesnt' really matter what the unwashed masses think anyway, because the sad fact is that the great majority of them don't read anyway. And as we all know, theres not really much difference between someone who can't read and someone who doesn't.

Also, my typing is off at present, because typing with a nursing one year old in your lap is a lot harder than it looks! (so please no illiteracy comments aimed my way)

 

[Guest]

 

[deliciously_naughty]

Nobody show that to my 3rd graders...I'm having a hell of a time expressing to them how important correct spelling is.

 

[Seattle Zack]

As far as spelling goes, I think that people who can't spell just must not read very much. I can tell immediately when a word isn't spelled correctly because it just looks wrong. It jumps out of the page at me. Even executives with MBAs at companies I work for type up memos filled with "alot" and "there proposals."

Sad to say, I learned almost no real grammar until I took Spanish in high school. For English, I had no idea of the difference between future imperfect and past participle tenses. We learned to diagram sentences, but that was about it.

With me, grammar is much the same as spelling. When I read something that's grammatically incorrect, it just "feels wrong." I don't exactly know why sometimes (and then I have to pull out the old Strunk & White).

I have my doubts about these new proposals for teaching kids how to read; I think that before our brain can recognize words in groups and patterns we need to go through the painful process of learning the actual letters and becoming familiar with the structure of words.

--Zack

 

[MathGirl]

Gd Grf!

They're not condoning misspellings. They're talking about the way we actually read, and they're right.

As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with Dr M. That thing that started the thread was easy to read, as long as the first and last letters were correct.

I also notice that I tend to read the first sentence in a longish paragraph, then I skip to the last sentence. Only if those two sentences don't relate and make sense do I read the bulk of the paragraph. I would guess many people who are fast readers do that.
MG

 

[LorriLove]

Someone just sent this to me -

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."


Strange, but it does partially explain DurtGurl's dubious success despite her obvious - um - shortcomings.


( I need a drink)

i nac raed ti perftecly honye, but thne i ma drnuk

 

[Seattle Zack]

This same news item also came up at a crossword constructor's forum I frequent. Being word freaks, they analyzed it to death, but it's interesting that it's not just the first and last letters that make the words recognizable. When the longer words are scrambled a bit, it becomes much more difficult to read:

Aidcroncg to rheeracs at an elsnigh utiirsnevy, it dneso't mteatr in waht oerdr the leertts in a wrod are; the olny ironmapt tnihg is taht the fsrit and lsat ltreets be at the rhgit pcales. the rset can be a ttaol mses and you can slitl raed it wutihot pleborm. Tihs is busacee the haumn mnid deos not raed eervy lteetr by iesltf, but the wrod as a wlhoe.

 

[Guest]

Zack, I read your scramble easily and quickly. What does that mean?

Perdita

 

[destinie21]

hmm all this leads me to knowing is that I can easily translate misspelled words but spelling does matter. In a paragraph fine anymore than that and I wouldn't read it. I could but I wouldn't .

 

[openthighs_sarah]

It's interesting because it's not about misspelling in general, or the usefulness (or lack thereof) of proper spelling, but about the specific way the mind interprets written symbols.

I don't think it's sad or pathetic at all. The interesting thing is that if you couldn't read at all, you still wouldn't be able to read that paragraph. You have to learn how to do it in order to create mental shortcuts in the first place.

Spelling in any language, and in English in particular, is so strange and arbitrary. Unfortunately (to me), a great many teachers don't recognize or accept that it's arbitrary -- and then they wonder why kids don't recognize its importance. At least when I was going to school, the teachers never presented any context for spelling or linguistics -- there was never any suggestion that this was art, rather than a set of immutable physical laws. I learned how to spell and write in spite of most of my teachers, not because of them.

 

[raphy]

It's only about the science of reading if you're actually literate and smart. If you're not, you'll use it as carte blanche to spell things incorrectly..

*shrugs* .. Maybe I'm just being a staggeringly over the top intellectual snob here.. I can blame it on nothing other than my schooling, having emerged from the more expensive end of the English education system.

p.s. I also had no problems reading Zack's post - I still think it's important to spell words correctly.