Dear Dennis,

Your experience shows clearly, the standard of high as well as elementary schools -internationally. This is a general symptom of a tendency that lack of culture and knowledge will be soon predominant. I used to stress to use whole sentences with punctuation and to start sentences with capitals. The writings of many students are unreadable thus some had to be called to “translate” them me. There is but one opportunity, the teacher should not accept assignments and other written jobs with spelling and other grammatical mistakes.

Often I think they are transferring their text messaging style, in which extra characters are often dropped, to their classroom writing.  They need to understand the difference, and when to apply each style.

Dear Dennis Soku

Like any other learning process, learning a new language might be accompanied with various problems, which includes mistakes or errors. They are considered an obligatory feature of the learning process. Learning a new language involves becoming proficient in the four languages skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Mistakes are an inevitable part of this process and neither the teacher nor the student should become fixated on them. Everyone who writes in English or any other language might make such mistakes. In many cases such errors or mistakes are the consequence of quick writing where the focus is on the content rather than the form. Obviously, a student may turn in a piece of written work that has no mistakes of mechanics, grammar or usage, but is a long way from meriting a good grade. This is typically for the reason that the student has not understood or complied with the writing task, has given no thought to structure and organization, has made no effort to string sentences together in a logical and coherent way, has plagiarized, and so on. Most mistakes such as punctuation will vanish automatically as the L2 student becomes more proficient, consequently, L2 teachers require not focus too much attention on them. However, it is a primary task of the mainstream teacher to assist L2 students to improve in the more fundamental aspects of writing well. This can be applied to subject-specific genres such as lab reports, essays, critical assessments of different subjects, etc.

Dear Mohammad,

I have written about Hungarian students using their native language.

To learn writing it is necessary write. It is important to suggest to students that they express one idea at time, in simple sentence. They must finish each sentence with a dot, full stop within a paragraph, and to start the next sentence with capital letter. At the end of paragraph must be a dot. The paragraph, at a change of theme or subject, must have among six and ten lines.

Hi Dennis; It is a real problem and increasing day by day

 I feel it is due to calus attitude of students. They must be grind at school level for panctiatio and writing grammatically correct. This attitude is being developed may be because of texting shprt messages etc. So the students mist be forced to write correct e glish and for that they should be corrected at their fitst mistake. Thanks

.

This question tackle real problem between and among students in writing. I believe to know the size of this problem each language is different and require a survey. from my experience in Arabic language,  the writing errors are increasing these days within the new generation. 

It probably has a lot to do with sms and mobile, twitter  etc. Interestingly enough it is a kind of return to the ancient practice. In the original Bible manuscript one does not have capital, punctuation. In the Hebrew you even do not have vowels. Your brain is used more. I do not like it, but this is a clear tendency.

I agree that a large part of the problem lies with the use of textese - which I've learnt is now a language all on its own - that is fast becoming acceptable on many fronts and is being studied academically (see the call for papers that I've recently come across below for your interest). I agree too that for many, including my country where an English Creole is the first language, the "standard" English is a second language with rules that differ from the first language (as it does for us) and maybe should be taught as such. I guess that it puts us teachers now in a position of needing to be skilled to deal appropriately with these new developments in language which, from comments above, seem rather universal irrespective of what the mother tongue of the country is. Nice idea for an international comparative study!

Call for Papers to "Ubiquity" journal's December 2014 (see their website at http://ed-ubiquity.gsu.edu/wordpress/)

"Today, students text, Tweet, Facebook, shoot video with their phones, record and mix audio, make electronic drawings, etc. These methods have become the primary modes of expression in terms of written communication, but there is no systematic curriculum to support them in the classroom. Multimedia composing is not the same, though, as traditional writing. That’s

because a lot of rhetorical decisions have to be made prior to composing with so many choices of tools. This issue explores multimedia writing and instruction in the classroom and beyond these and related questions:

• What does multimedia writing look like?

• Can you have “quality” in multimedia composition?

• What are some of the ways to teach multimedia writing?

• What are some of the complexities involved in the teaching of multimedia writing and how can they be addressed?"

My wife is a retired university English professor.  One of her most vivid teaching memories is being called a "grammar Nazi" by her students for insisting on good grammar. It follows that students ignore punctuation (and other traditions for good writing) because they increasingly rebel against authority for the sake of rebelling itself, not for any practical motive.  Students fail to realize that by enrolling in an English course, they automatically renounce the usage of bad English. The best way to counter this carelessness is constantly to remind students why they initially enrolled in the English course.

The reason is due to the teacher who ignores errors when students do not write punctuation marks, so to solve this problem, teachers must guide and admitted in awareness sessions to ensure the safety of their language and then head to resolve students' errors.

I still see as the main cause of the problem first the switch to TV instead of reading and then switch to multimedia. Reading of the books caused subsconscious footprint of both good grammar and of formulation. handwriting and typing machines forced to think about whole sentence, paragraph and page ahead, because any bigger change meant to rewrite the whole page. Electronical means in conjunction with grammar and spelling checkers allows to express something often without second thought and without re-reading it again.

I feel that the texting message is also a big cause for poor grammar. Now they are trying to create a new dictionary of words which have meaning of a sentence. Who knows that some day the may form even new rules of grammar for short and quick writing. After all every thing is changing fast in this world. 

For punctuation marks such as , sometime !!  may ignore & overlook by the students.Regular hints & guidance will certainly play a part .Very often student should with a little voice start reading their writings & with a earlier hints let the student verify the omission of such punctuation carefully & within the course of time student may automatically find their omission of punctuation.

In the past,  High School teachers taught students how to diagram sentences and  the use of punctuation marks to separate words into sentences, clauses, and phrases in order to clarify meaning. When I look back at my primary and secondary school curriculum, diagramming sentences and punctuation were the most important lessons i learned. They were the wellspring from which all future knowledge flowed, especially English composition. I fear that modern High School teachers have eliminated or minimized these skills too much. The answer is to re-emphasize diagramming sentences and punctuation skills in the classrooms of our primary and secondary schools. I hope someone can help me understand why these critical skills were eliminated or seriously minimized in the schools. This was a colossal mistake.

Am I right to say it is not just about "ignoring" but could perhaps be "not knowing" or "missing" or "over looking" ?. I think this is symptomatic of the quality of education we are having in the basics.

This pattern may not just be observed in the high school students but even among college students.

Depending on where they are placed, punctuation marks affect a sentence's message and help the reader in understanding the writer's intended message. However, nowadays youths are becoming habitual of speaking and writing short words/texts and paying no attention to punctuations. Therefore, the key focus should be to get students understand right from school stage that the use of punctuation makes it easier to read and comprehend writer ideas. Also some marks can completely change the intended meaning. Ahead of just memorizing the rules and uses of a punctuation mark, student should encourage to discuss punctuation within their reading classrooms as how the punctuation affects the reader's interpretation of a passage. These little but powerful marks in the text tell the reader where to pause, breathe, raise his voice, change his voice, etc. They aren't to be ignored.

As  YOGESH wrote above:

"Depending on where they are placed, punctuation marks affect a sentence's message and help the reader in understanding the writer's intended message."

Can you imagine what might happen if such person would have written any legal text, for instance?

The real problem is not only with punctuation, it is the symbols and abbreviation that the new generation using Latin letters for many languages which very difficult to understand. can you read this for example : 7aram 3likom

there is nothing that can be done the use of punctuation upper case letters and the like is considered to be superfluous by the modern writer if you have a problem with that too bad for you it is the collapse of western civilization and you must accept it or you could assign a score to each students paper and subtract a point from that score for each missing element of punctuation tell them it is like a video game

In the 1980s, I used to give questions,in chemistry to the students,  which require writing such as (Explain, Account for, Write an essay, Compare & contrast ...etc.). In the 1990s, I started to see errors in dictation & punctuation which amounted to serious mistakes in the science itself. I did not tolerate that so there were penalties. The students complained & the "big brothers" in the administration sided with the students. Their argument was "Come on ! They are learning chemistry & not English language!". Of course, that was unreasonable because any science is strongly linked to the language of science. But I put my conviction aside & changed my questions into (Multiple choice or  Fill in the blanks with one or 2 words or Match between 2 columns..etc.) because I do not want to play a surely "lost" game with the "geniuses" above!

Nizar,

Your experience reinforces my strong belief in the impact of cultural changes upon society, especially academia. What I lack understanding about is what factors are most important is determining the direction and quality of cultural changes. Are our High School and Grammar School teachers neglecting grammar, sentence structure and punctuation. I believe that learning these skills in school were critical to any success I have had in life.

Val

Technology has played its part. Using abbreviations on mobiles as "c u " - "'see you'" adolescents are talking their own language which maybe strange to us but quite adequate for their understanding.  It seems that they want to simplify things, to gain time. I agree that this has to be checked at early stages in life to make them note the differences when writing assignments and sending messages.

Carmen,

I agree with what you have written. If people are capable of  learning two languages, they can learn the difference between writing assignments and sending messages.

Cordialmente,

Valentino

I teach writing (Scientific Methods) to second-year biology students. I start one class with the argument that words and punctuation are the only tools they have to get their ideas across when writing. I incorporate humour and real-life consequences to make my points. You may find this page very useful:

http://grammar.about.com/od/punctuationandmechanics/a/punctmatters07.htm

@ Dear Patricia,

Thats excelent page. And it was also the reason why I used only simple sentences when I was writing legal texts in the past, although it probably looked like written by En beginner after third lesson. Something like the example 2 from your link on adjectives, i.e. "Some children have not received flu shots. These children must visit the school doctor." :-))))))))

Dear György,

Really, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. I have seen a page of the New Testament and I have not found capitals or punctuation. I do not know Hebrew but I have learned Arabic. Vowels are not used also in Arabic. I stress, I do not think that lack of vowels would be an advantage of this language. As far as I can recognise, neither Hebrew nor Arabic have became a lingua franca. I used to read the Gospel of John in French, German and English. I do stress punctuation and capitals help a lot in the understanding of the holy text. In a world where functional illiteracy increases punctuation and capitals are indispensable.

To learn  writing it is necessary write. It is important to suggest to students that they express one idea at time, in simple sentence. They must finish each sentence with a dot, full stop within a paragraph, and to start the next sentence with capital letter. At the end of paragraph must be a dot. The paragraph, at a change of theme or subject, must have among six and ten lines.

To learn writing it is necessary write. It is important to suggest to students that they express one idea at time, in simple sentence. They must finish each sentence with a dot, full stop within a paragraph, and to start the next sentence with capital letter. At the end of paragraph must be a dot. The paragraph, at a change of theme or subject, must have among six and ten lines.

They are transfering the internet language to their academic life. These students need to be informed that these two worlds can coexist, but they should never interfer with each other. This is a new stage of growth popping up. Groups may create new communication rules to separate themselves from other groups. Whoever speaks like them is part of their communiity. This is also done by us when we want that a technical language to be used. Same with religion, politics etc. A doctor can not talk to his children as if they were also doctors. So, students nowadays should be aware of that too. If they want to make money in a technical world, they have to speak the language of that community. If they refuse to do it. They should leave the school and develop something in a social network. If I do not want to use German, I should never consider living in Germany.

It is callus attitude towards grammar and also the attitude of teachers not punishing them in the beginning. Tough attitude of teachers and even parents now can check this practice in their wards. Here in India parents are more worried than their wards future.

This is true, but reading good books and articles should be encouraged.

I teach writing to second year biology students. I use humour and examples to show students that the only tools at their disposal for writing clear and concise papers are words and punctuation. Here's a good site that I use in class

http://www.infoplease.com/cig/grammar-style/punctuation-matters.html

You can also tell students about the two million dollar comma. Once students see the importance of punctuation, I find that they start paying more attention to it. I also invite peer reviews of papers, and students tend to watch for errors in punctuation.

it is due to the importance of spoken variety of language even in texting in different social networks. the prevalence of the spoken variety over the written form triggers texts without punctuation.

These are taught in schools especially at the elementary and secondary level of education. Students can also avoid such by writing consciously and patiently.

I am afraid school teachers are by-passing punctuation rules as they say it is "too much work" to correct them. I heard that many times. However, if the students were penalized for forgetting commas and full stop marks, then they might remember to use them...

. In electronic messaging, the use of punctuation is deemed inappropriate by some experts. Since texting is a major form of communication these days, many students tend to exclude punctuation from their academic writings as well. As a language teacher, what are the TWO activities that you can suggest to your students to help them eliminate this practice?