A friend of mine just informed me that his daughter who is in the 1st grade is required to: 1) know how to use a mouse 2) log into a computer using her own username and password. doesn't that blow you away? damn, I'm amazed!
Got my first computer (Apple Macintosh LCII) in 1991. That also happened to be my first year of school. I was playing Lucasarts adventure games and Microsoft Flight Simulator by 1992. It's important to teach kids how to use computers from a young age. A pretty sad sight is seeing someone in their 20's or late teens these days who's inept with a computer.
It's pretty unbelievable..my son was required to turn in his book reports TYPED last year - no parental help allowed. He was in 3rd grade. One of his math sheets was on congruent shapes and math fractions! Nowadays homework for the kids means homework for parents too!
Kindergarten required learning: Knowing the difference between "your" and "you're" and "their" and "they're" DL
As an elementary teacher, I'm worried we'll all soon find out that this is a big mistake. My students are like mini-adults now, with busy schedules and responsibilty, yet they are coming through more immature each year. Somewhere we lost sight of what it means to be a kid, and I wish more parents would say something.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Art, you paying attention to this?
I think my family got our first computer in... 1990, a 5mhz machine with a turbo 10mhz option I think. My father was still using it till the motherboard battery or something finaly died last year. Now he's on a 25mhz machine. We got internet access in... I think when I was in 2nd grade so 1993. I was playing online text only computer games back then. North East East "There is an angry goblins" Lightning Lightning Lightning "There is a goblin corpse" Loot Corpse "You find a golden dagger" You get the idea So pfh, those 1st graders are behind the curve! We're depriving children of a proper education. Learn your A,B,Cs and QBasic in Kindergarten!
YES!!!!! Also "know" and "no", "one" and "won", "it's" and "its", the list goes on... I'm amazed by the disasterous spelling of some members on these forums who supposedly are college "educated".
if that is a requirement, then i certainly hope that keyboard prose is taught to the same extent writing was. i'm tired of seeing txtspeak and l33tspeak being valid methods of delivering a message. i got my "pen licence" in 1984, the same year i got a commodore 64. as for people in their 20's being inept with a computer, i'm thinking that's a commodity that's unknown to even them. the next 5 years IS NOT the time to get into computers, especially in our windows world. sure, they're getting faster and better "mechanically" and you can do things with such a low budget that anyone 10 years ago with a new pentium would have drooled over, but the annoyance factor has increased ten-fold in the last 5 years. virii, buggy OS's/core software, keeping up with patches. ugh. i'm really beginning to appreciate my computer situation at werk, where we have people who look after all that stuff. 5 years ago i thought of them as big-brother'esque up in the clouds getting the big money to watch over my actions. nowadays they're the grunts, keeping the cogs turning, the tracks greased, and the bog-rolls stocked.
actually those aren't that common, it's more like "lose" and "loose", "to" and "too"... the kind of errors that can alter the entire context of a sentence. but don't forget "breaks" and "brakes"... i'm usually disinterested in homonym failures as my time has taught me that not all are the linguistic student i am, but when it's from someone who's talking cars... puh-leeeze.
What is the proper context for "to" and "too" anyway? I think the only time I have ever known is when I was actually taking in an english class.
I only used those examples because I have actually seen them on Fchat! Mistakes usually made by Americans, too! That comment illustrates my point exactly. Eos, it says you are interested in mechanical watches in your profile. From that I can deduce with reasonable certainty you have an attention to detail. Therefore, you are not doing yourself justice by being unaware of such fundamental concepts in English. Especially considering you are in College, one would expect becoming more "educated."
I've finished my English classes and got my As thank you It just doesn't matter that much anywhere else. Though while I was not sure about the proper use of to and too my tentative thoughts were what ash said. Doesn't mean I actually pay attention to those thoughts when I'm writing things on message boards. I'm happy having generally good spelling and decent grammar. Though I am known for run-on sentences. Better question, without looking it up 13th Grand Admiral, what is the proper use of ;? That is another bit of the English language virtually no one in the world knows how to use.
Does no one else appreciate the irony here??? Anyhow, quit yer b!tchin'...as the communication medium becomes less and less formal, so does the manner of conversation.
Interesting thought, but probably wrong. Im pretty sure that I am won of the worst offenders on the board when it comes to spelling. Im also a mechanical engineer, so Ive had plenty of school. My problem is that my memory is horrible. I cant remember names, I cant remember spelling. With engineering, the correct formula can always be derived or deduced and any constants looked up, no need to remember anything. Spelling the English language requires the memorization of something like 10%-20% of the words. The rules for spelling contradict each other, the letter sounds seem random at times, pronunciation often ignores letters, sometimes as many as half the letters in the word. Personally, I have simple quit caring. If spell check is not available, you get what you get. Words that sound EXACTLY the same, but are spelled different? Not in my english, the one exception I would be willing to live with is there, theyre since they are different words with only the contraction making them sound the same. I truly believe it is the dictionary that is wrong and needs to be fixed. To that end, is each of our responsibilities to spell words in the most reasonable way, whether or not it is the correct way. MY wife is Ukrainian, when she learned that in English, "Bat the bat with the bat." is a perfectly good sentance, her head almost exploded. The dictionary will change to match common usage, its just a matter of time.
Ahh yes, the semi-colon. I use it all the time! You use the semi-colon to break up two independant clauses which are more distinct than if you were to use a comma, but less so than when using a full colon. For example, the clause after the semi-colon may be a qualification or expansion upon the idea(s) expressed in the first clause.
i've become very lax about textual conversations as it has become evident over the last decade that much of my discussions are with folks from alternate countries/planets... etc, whereby english is just another language. i applaude the efforts of those who are capable of communicating (even though 90% through smilies ) in a reasonable facsimile of our language even though it is often funny. what saddens me, is that there are many who share the same "first" language as myself, yet are barely capable of communicating with me.
well, all's i'm hoping for is that folks who are capable of writing more than 1 (note numerical usage to avoid confusion ) sentence at a time can also afford the time it takes for spacing. just remember, space in text is like blood in steak, too little and you can't digest it, too much is still a good steak. i know it's not about a sc'd ferrari, but text like this: ....isn't easy to read... at least to me. personally, i was unable to read it at all without copy/pasting it into TEXTPAD and spacing it out. not saying this to be nasty, it's just i nearly always ignore passages of text like that, unless i REALLY WANT to read them. i may be wrong. text like this however... ...i can deal with, and would have read from start to finish the first time.
oh, sorry but couldn't help it. having read back over stuff, i loved this missed opportunity to use the their/there/they're card. ace in the sleeve, huh?
AMAZING! Calm down and proof your own writing before criticizing someone else. Each one of your posts in this topic is more and more contrived, full of bigger words than the last, as if you have something to prove by all of this. It's just the internet!
actually, if you want to read very bad grammar and poor spelling just go onto the Pistonheads forum (it's the greatest UK car forum) where English is definitely there FIRST language. The fact the grammar is poor and spelling bad means nothing as I think that forum is the funniest car forum, but you have to understand the English sense of humour to get most of it. I know WE pride ourselves on presenting an educated view here in Australia but most times if the spelling is poor and the grammar terrible the presentation loses credibility but on an internet car forum you expect people from vastly different backgrounds who are highly intelligent but consider the written word of little importance so long as the point has been made. I still think the funniest letter I ever read was from a werk (sorry ash, you started it ) experience teenager I took for a week in the old days as a WANG engineer where she said "I reelly enjoyed my week on cumputers"
