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[rone]

A recent survey of 120 American corporations [...] by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.

[...]

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."

I expected this to be a problem, but not to this degree.  I certainly don't see it at my company, with the exception of a certain Bush-backing fellow out East who loved excessive punctuation, but reined it in since someone chided him about it.

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

My students seem to do pretty well with written assignments. Some of them have trouble with vocabulary (I recall an entertaining essay that mentioned the serious "ethnic" issues raised by artificial intelligence) and grammar (verb tenses especially), but that seems to be just because of English not being their first language. I very seldom feel the desire to grab students by the lapels and yell "You fucking IDIOT!!" I hardly ever see instant-messaging abbreviations like "u" and "btw" in submitted student work.