Literacy

Yesterday’s The Times has an article about poor spelling. As an EFL speaker, I often make similar mistakes, and I always mix up words spelled with “-cede”, “-sede” and “-seed”. To make it worth, the British and the Americans persist in expressing their national character by different spelling. I am not just thinking of “-or” and “-our”, which is easy, but I have made a mental notice of spelling “enquiry” rather than the “inquiry” I am used to.

My Californian students had really bad spelling skills, and at one time I collected their funniest mistakes, such as “take it for granit” and “gender rolls”.

Yet I was troubled when I saw a huge poster in one of the teaching buildings:

ITS = OF IT

IT’S = IT IS