In my opinion the most important subject a person can take in any secondary education is English (or whatever your native country speaks).
Reason being is you can be a great artist, mathematician, or bio-technician, but if you can't speak or write very well then how does it look. Having the ability to understand English in a commanding way will also help you to comprehend what is being taught by other texts.
What is your opion?
Offtopic but, PS. Since I use computers all the time I have become accustomed to spelling in US English, but normally I spell words like; labour, co-operation, harbour, etc. Actually, my English has become very poor because I do not check it as I used to. Emails are the worst of all! |
I actually think that it's a good idea. I am terrible about leavin letters off my words to go with how I actually speak the words in real life. More of a slang than anything else, but still, I could do better than what I do now.
I completely agree, that a mastery of your native language is essential to future progression. It annoys me very much to see a professional presentation littered with misspellings, grammatical errors, and punctuation problems. This is professional?? I think not. I strive to make my written word as clear as possible. And in my opinion, that's only effective if you know how to spell, construct a sentence, and punctuate properly. I'm not perfect (obviously) but I try very hard to do it right. People who are paid to do it right and then mess it up really make me angry. As an example, my daughter's first grade teacher sends home a little newsletter each month -- full of misspellings and punctuation errors! She has a master's degree!! And this is the person teaching my kid? Oy veh.
And truly the web, or the net or whatever you call it, has been a very poor influence on people because we use so much shorthand and smilies and LOL and IIRC and FOAF and ROFLMBO. Yikes, it's alphabet soup. How do you punctuate that? (LOL)
Roz
I finished my High School certificate at a TAFE college (Technical And Further Education) and English was the only compulsory subject. One third of a percent of the final marks for our TER score (Tertiary Entrance Rank) were calculated from our results in English. It is a priority in secondary education these days. Most, if not all jobs require a high level of English skills and it is essential if you consider studying at a tertiary level. (Most professors and lecturers are really strict about it)
The other subjects are usually only a prerequisite in certain areas of employment or study. (Although Mathematics is pretty common place, but not as essential as English) Having a good knowledge of other less important subjects (not that some subjects are less important in all cases) just helps to specialize I think. For instance, chemistry and biology is helpful if you want to specialize in a career like medicine or nursing. Where mathematics and physics comes in handy in stuff like engineering.
it's a good idea if you are bad at english. but personally and the most people i know speak very good english, just by watching tv and playing games. but i agree that it is an very important language in the world and it's quite handy if you can at least speak and understand it
being a military brat i know that i can go anywhere in the world and they can speak english (now that doesn't mean they'll use it if they don't like you). also if you are in the states and you write a letter or anything but you do a botched up job it kinda shows your ignorance. now let me explain the way i have come to know the word ignorance before you all get mad at me. ignorance means that you don't know. children are ignorant cuz they can't read or right; they don't know how to. i'm ignorant to other cultures, becuase i don't know them (i know some, but not all). now when i type on the comp. i don't use capitol letters, because i am lazy and i think people get the point. i feel on comps. or on forum boards people are a lil more relaxed and i don't have to use all the good english and proper writing ettiuquette (sp?) i have been taught. in the real world i do use it correctly. a good example is my boss mr. juan. he is hispanic and is the manager of mc.donalds (still in school so it's a quick and fast job). i understand that he doesn't know how to spell properly, but when he writes a letter to the company on our behalf i cringe, becuase stuff isn't spelled right and it's botchy and wrong. it shows that our manager is ignorant of some english writing techniques. I want to become a high school english teacher and i guess he has figured this out, because now he comes to me to correct his papers and to help him on our writing system. my point is if you want to become successful in this english world you really need to know english. Not just the language, but the written version as well. like they say the pen is mightier than the sword.
smooches