British students are bad in English.

[Pumaman]

It's not just grammar that's a problem these days, though. Employers are complaining that British kids are lazier and stupider than ever before, and a large proportion of people leaving school are not able to fit into a working environment because they don't have the skills to do so, for example thinking that's it's perfectly ok to write a report in txt-speak.

The future of society is doomed .... doomed, I tells ya.

[Creed Malay]

I know the usage of the "holy cheese",

Cheeses of Nazareth?

As much as I hate text-speak, I can understand kids becoming used to using it to the extent that they instinctively use it rather than "proper" English. At least they are writing to each other, I suppose - ten years back, before the internets and the horrible horrible mobile phones, how often do you think the average person would have written anything much after leaving school?

That said, though, I've a pretty heavy northern English accent, and tend towards saying things ungrammatically - "me" instead of my, "aye" instead of yes, "gan" instead of go and such, but I wouldn't write that way. It just wouldn't be right.

And now I have forgotten what I was saying in the first place.

[radiowaves]

Somehow I am not surprised at all that I see this. Brits are turning more and more americans these days, ever since the supermarket culture evolved, bringing those fat puppet kids along with. Problem of rich societies. Some friends of mine who have moved to england have even said that there aren't even any beautiful women out there...

[Snarky]

This is so obvious that I shouldn't have to point it out, but foreign students who are doing essay-heavy courses at Oxford and Cambridge are not your average foreigners. They have been selected specifically for excellence in English. This finding, even if true, certainly does not show that foreigners speak better English than Englishmen in general. I think the posts in this thread demonstrate that that claim would be false.

As a foreigner with good knowledge of English, I think there are a few factors that make people like me less likely to make certain mistakes. For one thing, we're more careful, because we can't rely on "gut feeling" to tell us what's correct and what's incorrect. Lacking intuition, we have been forced to learn the technical rules, and to learn them well. And because of all the work it has taken to achieve our current level of skill (and because we're conscious of our deficiencies), we don't like to make mistakes, and perhaps try harder to avoid them than native speakers. And finally, being fluent in another language can sometimes provide a sanity check on dubious English constructions. For instance, I don't think you would see many foreigners using the despicable *"would of" instead of "would've" or "would have," because the sounds that are similar in English are very different in other languages.

It should also be pointed out that even if foreigners do better at avoiding basic errors in writing assignments, that doesn't mean we are better at writing good English, which takes a much more subtle feel for the language, much less at speaking it. Even having used English primarily since high school, and having lived in the UK and US for the last seven years, I know I'm not as fluent in the language as a native speaker.

[Oliwerko]

Some friends of mine who have moved to england have even said that there aren't even any beautiful women out there...

Hell, this is a coincidence. My class was in England for two weeks (I was ill) and they said the exact thing to me! I know that 2 weeks are not enough to make a conclusion, but, anyway.... It must be partly true, I am hearing it from time to time...

[tube]

Tube, my dear tube, it was a pun. A very bad pun. Dung means manure means s**t.

I know what it means, dear Rui. I was just venting the frustration of having to work my ass off on a Sunday (again) by being a pedantic ass.

[shbaz]

It's not just grammar that's a problem these days, though. Employers are complaining that British kids are lazier and stupider than ever before, and a large proportion of people leaving school are not able to fit into a working environment because they don't have the skills to do so, for example thinking that's it's perfectly ok to write a report in txt-speak.

The future of society is doomed .... doomed, I tells ya.

There's a documentary about this called "Idiocracy."  You should give it a watch if you can find it, it's an American film.

[LimpingFish]

Waz teh ding? No troblem, no troblem tall. Moonikay ow 1 fleaz, freep, sceptical doz hu fee day haz doo doo props, eh? No troblem, freeps. Allzgud.

[Fyntax]

and also "holy cheese" instead of "cheese with holes".

Well, what if said cheese actually was holy?

It's far better to have an holy cheese than holy holes..

[InCreator]

Don't let your nation be ashamed, do something about this!

If this was also response to my post, you made a little mistake. Check my profile to clarify: I'm Estonian.

Anyway, these filthy imperialist scum American spies should know best:
According to CIA factbook, literacy stats in

age 15 and over can read and write
In Latvia, it's 99.7%
United Kingdom, 99%
Russia, 99.4%
(not sure about dates, but no one actually is)

So, seems that Russians are more literate than people on the islands
Of course, this doesn't reflect grammar usage or correctness.

Anyway, you can find bad grammar these days about anywhere.
People at my work have trouble enough to even write a resignation or that paper where you ask for vacation (how it's called in English?). But I wouldn't really blame internet and IM lingo for this, back in days, kids were chasing ball during free time. Now they're sitting behind monitors and reading & writing in instant messengers and forums.

How come this hasn't helped to improve grammar and reading overall?

[voh]

Waz teh ding? No troblem, no troblem tall. Moonikay ow 1 fleaz, freep, sceptical doz hu fee day haz doo doo props, eh? No troblem, freeps. Allzgud.

MY EYES! MY EYES! :o :'(

[Gord10]

I would want to add something to this topic;

A few weeks ago, I was attending an express English course in order to skip the preperation class (and to pass the exam, firstly) in university [offtopic](I've passed the exam successfully, by the way. When I finish writing this post, I will get outside home in order to catch the bus that will take me to my first lesson in the engineery) [/offtopic]

I had a friend there whose family was quite wealthy and had lived in London for many years. He could communicate with British people easily, as if he was one of them (at least it is what he told me, I don't think he was lying).
But his grammer and language skills were awful. He was always making mistakes in grammer exercises (especially tense exercises, he was asking me how to do somethings) and he knew some words wrong  (for example; writing "unemployment" as "unployment").

My point is...
Well, I am about to miss the schoolbus!

   

[monkey0506]

This is definitely true. Most British kids these days don't know "their" from "they're" or "there", which is quite sad ... but then you realise, does it actually matter? If people can make themselves understood, does it matter if they are gramatically correct or not?

Wait a second...you're telling me these kids over there don't know the difference between their "their"s, their "there"s, and their "they're"s and they're mixing them all up? And you're telling me that in your opinion this is okay?

Heh...that'd screw 'em up.

As Santa road rode upon his slay sleigh
Delivering toys along the weigh way
To all the girls and all the boys
Who's Whose letters brought to him much joy
He shouted loud, he shouted clear,
"Eye'll I'll be back this thyme time next year.
So to all you brats who couldn't spell:
You'd better learn...or go to Hell."

[Gilbert]

"sun" instead of "son"

Sorry, I didn't read the whole thing (and am not interested to), but I'm too tempted to say, that the world becomes better if we go on replacing all occurrences of "son" with "sun".

Sun of the beach, everyone.

[Alynn]

The biggest difference, comes from the understanding of the written, and verbal word.

If I walked up to you and said, "Your the greatest." in your mind, nothing was wrong with that sentence. However, it's obviously wrong when written out.

Language is constantly evolving, new words are added into a persons daily vocabulary, and meanings are often changed over time.

As an example. I give you a word, this word is "geek". Imagine what this word means in your minds eye.

Now if you aren't visualizing a circus performer, whose acts usually consist of biting heads of off live animals, then you don't know what a geek is "officially".

Probably, and in all honesty, my biggest issue (besides spelling, which to be honest, comes mostly from learning to read phonetically, so if I don't know how to spell something, I tend to spell it how it sounds to me, which ends up being wrong much of the time) is ending sentences with a preposition.

However, as CJ already said, at the end of the day, if I say something, and you understand what I meant by what I said (or wrote), then communication has succeeded, and that is the sole purpose of language, for communication. However, when it comes to the written word, I notice bad spelling way before I'll notice bad grammar.

Oh and Snarky... It's not writing good english, it's writing english well.

[Lionmonkey]

This is so obvious that I shouldn't have to point it out, but foreign students who are doing essay-heavy courses at Oxford and Cambridge are not your average foreigners. They have been selected specifically for excellence in English. This finding, even if true, certainly does not show that foreigners speak better English than Englishmen in general. I think the posts in this thread demonstrate that that claim would be false.

As a foreigner with good knowledge of English, I think there are a few factors that make people like me less likely to make certain mistakes. For one thing, we're more careful, because we can't rely on "gut feeling" to tell us what's correct and what's incorrect. Lacking intuition, we have been forced to learn the technical rules, and to learn them well. And because of all the work it has taken to achieve our current level of skill (and because we're conscious of our deficiencies), we don't like to make mistakes, and perhaps try harder to avoid them than native speakers. And finally, being fluent in another language can sometimes provide a sanity check on dubious English constructions. For instance, I don't think you would see many foreigners using the despicable *"would of" instead of "would've" or "would have," because the sounds that are similar in English are very different in other languages.

It should also be pointed out that even if foreigners do better at avoiding basic errors in writing assignments, that doesn't mean we are better at writing good English, which takes a much more subtle feel for the language, much less at speaking it. Even having used English primarily since high school, and having lived in the UK and US for the last seven years, I know I'm not as fluent in the language as a native speaker.

You can develop this gut feeling with a foregn language too, if you study it long enough. At least I did.

[SSH]

Isn't this all simply a reflection of the fact that English has more homophones than most other languages?

[MrColossal]

U callin m3 GAY?!

[Snarky]

You can develop this gut feeling with a foregn language too, if you study it long enough. At least I did.

Sure. You can, to an extent. But it's never going to be as reliable as the sense you have for your first language. And no offense, but your English is riddled with errors.