My cat ran away
maxon:
Quote from: cwykes on 2008 January 03, 22:26:05
Dyslexia is a broad church and some people do have a problem working out how to divide their thoughts into sentences. My daughter is one of them. She's at Uni in the UK now, heading for a good degree, and she still runs everything into one unpunctuated mess. My experience is that UK teachers either don't know how to do it right themselves, aren't allowed to correct spelling and grammar or have given up trying or caring. I used to get "shut up you neurotic woman" looks when I'd raise her problems with teachers. It's nice for me that we do care on MATY!
Well, I can't speak for other universities but I can tell you that at the UK university where I work, spelling, grammar and punctuation are important and are taken into account in assessment (and, yes, that means marks are knocked off) and are discussed in feedback. However, I (and my colleagues) am aware that people struggle with these things and I, at least, try to avoid the "you are at this crap" approach which really doesn't seem to help. I don't know if this is true at other universities but students with problems here are assessed and supplied with help in the form of a support tutor. I think this tends to cause a conflict of interest in the area of student's language use and skills. If I know a student has problems and has a support worker, I tend to avoid giving too much input into how a student handles language and advise them to talk to their support tutor about any issues I have with their writing. I don't want to say anything that will foul up the support tutor's tactics. So maybe that does come across as backing off from the problem. My reasoning is that I am not qualified to help people with recognised cognitive problems: I'm an (nearly) academic, not a support worker. I deal in concepts and ideas and although language is the medium through which we talk to each other about those things, someone having a disability in that area doesn't come under my professional purview. It's a grey area, for me at least.
I think attitudes at UK universities are also slightly unexpected to the outsider which adds to the confusion. Universities here are about research first and foremost (that's what we get the money for and what we are appointed for - when I finally finish my PhD (submission date July this year, oh God), it is my research profile that will get me a job not my teaching skills, despite the fact I am a qualified teacher with over 20 years experience - this is fairly irrelevant) and still hold fast to the notion of universities are research institutions which undergraduates can attend and learn a great deal from being in that environment. You might make the distinction by saying: (undergrad) students come to university to learn rather than universities offer an education. It's a distinction most outsiders and, incidentally, most undergraduates don't understand. The impetus to learn is pushed much more into the realm of the student's initiative rather than directed by the institution. University in the UK is not an extension of school; it's something else, although, of course, universities do offer an education, in a sense, in the form of classes and assessment.
And finally, we're all aware (or should be at least) that dyslexia doesn't mean you're dumb. I have plenty of PhD and post-doc friends who are dyslexic. I get tired of people saying teachers are crap at **** - you can tell, can't you?
cwykes:
Makes sense to me. You are there to teach a subject at under-graduate level not to provide specialised learning support for grammar and spelling. It's just harder for a bright student to show how well they grasp the subject when the lack of punctuation gets in the way of reader comprehension. I've just found it frustrating that this has been true all through my daughter's education. Subject teachers focus on the subject, english teachers focus on Eng Lit and the mechanistic requirements of GCSE, class teachers care about social interaction and learning support don't get involved for minor problems. A bright kid with only one problem is 'normal'. Maybe it was supposed to be my job, but I wasn't trained for it either.
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