Quote:
Originally posted by Cube Inmate@Sep 22 2005, 04:17 PM
Literacy is not a binary thing. There are levels of literacy, based not only on the technical aspects of language (spelling and grammar) but on the ability to comprehend and convey meaning.
From this site:
(The link is screwed by the filters. It should be /f@gan2.htm)
"It is generally accepted these days that reading entails using four cueing systems: pragmatic and world knowledge, semantic (words and word relationships that allow one to make sense out of what is read), syntactic (the sequence and flow of language that enable one to predict, to follow logical thought, to relate information through connectives, etc.) and graphophonic (speech sounds and letter, syllable, and corresponding sound structure of words)"
Are you illiterate if you don't know the difference between "their" and "there," or "to" and "too?" No, but you're not literate enough to keep your resumé from ending up in Cheese's trash can. The grammatical laziness that's so common on the internet is, I believe, contributing to the problem. Frankly, that's something I'll have to live with...but it's not something that our kids should have to live with in their schools.
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Hey I agree with you about schools and I think it's disgraceful that kids come out of high school without basic skills. I've seen it first hand many times and it's not a lot of fun to correct. Try teaching a high school or even university student basic grammar and you'll get a pretty surly teenager and invariably you'll hear the sentence "who cares, you know what I meant".
I guess I just don't take message board laziness as seriously. If someone puts the same amount of time into their resumé as they do on a message board post, they've got bigger problems than screwing up "their" with "there". The main one being that they are stupid.
But you make a good point.