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Say what?  Little or no teaching of grammar, cell phone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can’t write properly. 

For years there’s been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.  Now there seems to be some solid evidence.   Ontario’s University of Waterloo is one of [many] post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills.  Almost a third of those students are failing.

Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo, says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.  Even . . . [the] so-called [academic] elite students, “often still can’t pass our simple test,” she says.

Barrett thinks that poor grammar is the major reason students fail.  “If a student has problems with articles, prepositions, verb tenses, that’s a problem.”  Some students

 . . . are no longer being taught grammar, she believes.

At Simon Fraser University (SFU), one in 10 new students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses required for graduation.  That 10 per cent must take “foundational” writing courses first.  SFU’s director of academic advising, Rummana Khan, says, “There has been this general sense in the past two or three years that we are finding more students struggling in terms of language proficiency.”  Emoticons, happy faces, sad faces, “cuz” are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at SFU.

Though spelling has improved because of Spellcheck, words like “a lot” and “definitely” are still frequently seen as “alot” and “definately”.  Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at SFU, says he is floored by some of what he sees.  He says that commas are sprinkled around like parmesan cheese and that students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for.  Punctuation errors are huge, according to Budra.  He also blames poor – or no – grammar instruction in lower schools, and, consequently, he’s been reduced to teaching basic grammar structure himself.

The teaching of grammar in both Ontario and British Columbia is part of the elementary and high school curricula.  Barret, however, says that the university level doesn’t have a formal relationship with secondary teachers in Canada, so there’s no simple way to communicate the skills that are necessary for success in university.

Concerns about the language skills of young people are not confined to North America.  The rise of computers and mobile phones has spread this linguistic anxiety across the globe, from India to Australia to the UK. 

Regardless of the source of the problem, it is time to sit up and take notice and start dealing with the white elephant in the room.

(Source:   http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5102uYbAZSE3AovHS_sJEnz407ww   and   http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/08/7395.ars)