Improving bad spelling and grammar as an adult
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Complaining about poor spelling and grammar, eh? I feel a microaggression. This sounds suspiciously patriarchal, culturally insensitive and even a little bit white supremacist. Language is fluid, we live in a 140-character universe, you can spell any way you like, and the more emojis the better!
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@Mokey I agree cheat sites don't work but I think some sites can aid as a form of tuition as long as they clearly show what changes are required and why.
TBF I don't think this is anything that new. I went through school and uni in the 70's (Arts) without getting any spelling or grammar tuition once I left primary school.
Was in the top 1% in national exam results, won creative writing comps etc. In all that time only one lecturer ever corrected my sentence structure. It was only when I started business writing that I realized how overblown and poorly constructed my writing was.
Even as recently as two years ago an Executive Summary template I had written was chosen by a brand guru to demonstrate to a multi-national how not to write! Although I still contend that was because the target audience was consumers and my piece was written for corporates.....
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@Mokey Cheers, exactly what I thought, I don't envy her having to learn these basics now and I really struggle to see how she could exactly. Bit depressing but she had no issue getting work in the UK so there is hope.
Feeling super guilty having been the one who encouraged her into an arts degree at massey since thats the way I went.
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@taniwharugby My teen students used to look at me and be all "Teacher, WHY???" I had every sympathy for the poor mites. Fuck me days, the spelling, tense changing the word completely, the rules, then the bloody exceptions to the rule...
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@Rembrandt Honestly, I think some intensive sessions of one-on-one tuition would help. Perhaps some high school English study guides, or some recommended reading textbooks from an international language school where they are boosting the skills of those who need business level understanding. For the fields she is in, she must grasp spelling and grammar. I know it is really hard, but investment now makes her employable down the track, if that is the barrier stopping her getting jobs.
Don't beat yourself up. Let others do that. Just help your sis find a solution. -
Lots of reading well written stuff can help too. But it's not a quick fix... It's going to take time and energy
Serving on Grammarly in theory too. I'm putting some ESOL grads that way. They have writing issues but can put together a decent structure in a report. Need help at a micro level for tense compatibility and sentence construction. Grammarly seems to do this better than some others.
Finally, it can be done and it's important she doesn't lose hope. We've trained a recent grad to good business writing over the last couple of years. It's a long hard road but it can be done.
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I attended a two day course with the Write Group ten years ago that was very useful (and eye opening!)
Goodness knows how, but I was the only person in the group who didn't have my writing sample picked on for various faults...
My trainer has long gone, but https://write.co.nz/training/ looks handy
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@Rembrandt said in Improving bad spelling and grammar as an adult:
The thing is she is an intelligent women and is really interested on improving
Without adding anything constructive to help mate - that made me laugh in a post started by you about spelling and grammar. I know no one likes a correcter, but my wife has multiple masters in English so I feel the need to spread the "love".