Today, in the class I'm teaching, I assigned my students an essay to complete for homework. One student asked me if I was deducting points for bad spelling. I teach English. FML
Collection
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
Today, I got back the essay I wrote about how my country's education system is fucked. At one point, I made a spelling mistake. My teacher wrote a note about it, basically calling me illiterate, and telling me to pay attention in school instead of whining about it. She misspelled "school". FML
Today, I was teaching a class when a student pointed out that I'd used the wrong "your/you're" while writing on the board. FML
Today, I turned in an overdue English assignment at college. My instructor accused me of plagiarism, writing that my sentence structure was "TO" good. Seriously? FML
Today, I received a terrible grade for an essay I worked really hard on. I had two friends, one being an English major, check it over. However, apparently I "clearly didn't use spellcheck" on this essay just like the last one I submitted to her. FML
Today, while grading my kindergarteners' spelling tests, one kid spelled all the words wrong, including his name. FML
Today, I had to re-grade a student's assignments because neither he, nor his parents can read "Spanish." I'd written in cursive. FML
Today, I'm grading final projects for a junior level college class. A student finally turned in their work, after months of encouragement and coaxing. Half of it was plain wrong, the rest had so many spelling and grammatical mistakes, it appeared to be written by a drunk autocorrect program. FML
Today, I lectured my second-grade class to be more descriptive in their writing. I gave them an assignment to describe something in the classroom. I was grading their work later, and one student wrote, "My class is taught by a fat teacher with gray hair." FML
Today, the feedback my teacher wrote on my English assignment was so horrible that it took me half an hour and help from both my parents to decipher it. It turned out to be a scathing criticism of my "poor communication skills". I hate my teachers. FML
Today, I turned in an essay after staying up late to work on it. I was away when the teacher assigned it, so I'd asked my friend what the subject was. It transpires that she'd given me the wrong one, all because she was mad at me for not returning her pencil. FML
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Top comments
RabbitOfAurora 28
I think that's a fair question depending on the class and what kind of teacher you are. Because if the point if the essay was say, structure. You might take the pressure off of them by forgiving a few spelling errors. I know I had teachers in high school that delayed whole exams by a week because the class as a collective didn't feel prepared and wanted more time to study.
socialproduct 19
If it's a typed essay, there's really no excuse for spelling errors.
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Comments (89)
JustEco 6
**** you for being a teacher
mh_2323 13
To all the people saying it was a valid question: think about how easy it is to look up how to spell something now (just say the word to google, Siri, ex.) it shouldn't be that hard to not have any spelling errors.
HawaiiThad 14
OP, you should reply, ”No, you will lose points for bad spelling." My point is that they earn (or fail to earn) points. You don't give them out.
Lauren_percival 1
For someone like me this is a typical question and one that shouldn't be laughed at I'm dyslexic and I've never been able to spell properly even in primary school id get into trouble for spelling wrong and it's very embarrassing so don't laugh or be mean to anyone who doesn't know how to spell
zaidthunder1 27
I suppose autocorrect did the job now.
DoomedGemini 38
If you have a condition that makes it hard to spell that's one thing, but the teacher should be aware of something like that. People with no conditions are expected to know spelling and if they don't they need to learn.
Arania79 3
Sadly, not all schools will accept this. I have been lucky in getting my son the help he needs with his dyslexia, but not all schools are as helpful about it. Teachers are not taught about this during their training unless they are specifically going into special education or have dealt with it in the past.
Lalala579121 28
Dyslexia doesn't prevent you from using punctuation, does it?
Crazyjohnb 23
Well its not always obvious
Jonkbaby 23
well,?
bryanna8180 7
Your a teacher... you are supposed to take any students question or concerns considerately
Jonkbaby 23
it pains me that the FML comment section is trying to pretend like we're all grammar nazis all of the sudden.
zaidthunder1 27
Not all essays test spelling since they can be used to test sentence structuring, and paragraph cohesion. I think your student has a valid point.
mounya 19
I've had plenty of English teachers that have said they won't deduct points for spelling errors because all they care about is structure and organization. I think the student's question was entirely reasonable but that's just from my own experience. It's evidently not the same for everyone else.
Lalala579121 28
I could maybe see that in a creative writing or English lit class. But if it's at the point where you know you can't spell and have to ask the teacher... Maybe it's time to get a tutor or something.