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Foreign students 'are better at English than British undergraduates'
Last updated at 15:07pm on 13.08.07
British undergraduates have a poorer grasp of English than some foreign students
Dr Bernard Lamb, a reader in genetics at Imperial College London, says those from Singapore and Brunei make fewer mistakes in their work, despite English being their second language.
UK-born students are more likely to produce essays littered with errors, such as "there" instead of "their", and "bean" instead of "been".
Many appear to have gone through school without mastering the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, or having their errors corrected.
Even undergraduates with top Alevel grades who go on to get first-class degrees made frequent elementary slips, he adds.
Dr Lamb is now publishing a diary of student howlers in an attempt to shame "complacent" education ministers into raising the standard of written English.
A summary of the list - which originally ran to 24 sheets of A4-sized paper - will be published in the next issue of the Queen's English Society journal, Quest.
Dr Lamb said: "All these students have good or excellent A-levels or their equivalents.
"The overseas students were generally less bad and the worst were UK raised and usually of British ancestry.
"There was little evidence of students being taught the relevant rules at school, or of the students having been corrected for obvious and frequent errors. Many did not even regard these errors as important.
"The Government and the educational establishment need to be shaken out of their current complacency about standards of English by constant exposure to evidence such as that presented here from intelligent and highly-qualified undergraduates."
The list, called Errors In The English Of Highly-selected Undergraduates, is due to be published today.
As well as typical slips, including spelling errors such as "effect" instead of "affect" and "sun" instead of "son", there were nonsense sentences and howlers which completely changed the intended meaning.
Undergraduates wrote of 'rouge' genetic elements and plants being "sewn" together.
In one case, a UK-born and educated first-class degree student wrote: "It initats a undisired nonspecific response in mamammals."
None of the 75 third and final-year students was dyslexic and many had used computer packages designed to spot spelling and grammatical errors.
The checkers, however, cannot pick up wrong word choices.
Dr Lamb, who is chairman of the London branch of the Queen's English Society, said: "There is not enough emphasis on teaching children how to speak and write properly. Public schools are the only ones still pretty good at this.
"Standards have been going downhill since the 1960s. Pupils are not marked down because of bad grammar, but they should be.
"The rot thus extends from top to bottom in education, from bureaucrats to schools."
Common mistakes selection (correct spelling in bold)
accure - occurred, acheived / achived - achieved, affectional - affectionate, analasys/ analisis, analyzation - analysis, anormal - abnormal, to apose - oppose
baliure - failure, behavior / behavoir - behaviour, belifs - beliefs, beleive - believe, benefitial - beneficial, it must be bloked - blocked, burgandy - Burgundy
caffin - caffeine, caliculated - calculated, calonised - colonised, chromasomes - chromosomes, critisms - criticisms
delation /deleation - deletion, dendancy - tendency, desinged - designed, devestating - devastating, dieat - diet, doner - donor
entirly - entirely, enoculation - inoculation, environement/ enviroment - environment, envolves - involves, exept - except
fangal - fungal, farely - fairly, fibers - fibres, fertalise - fertilise, flouresce - (fluoresce
garunteed - guaranteed, genatalia / genetalia / gentalia, genitle - genital, geneotype - genotype
haemoglobulin - haemoglobin, haemophelia - haemophilia, haermophrodite/ hermaphrodyte - hermaphrodite, heigh - high, hereditability - heritability
identicle - identical , inaffective - ineffective, independant / indepentant - independent, intelegence - intelligence, intellegent - intelligent, intresting - interesting
kernal - kernel, Kliefener/ Keiffer/ Kleinfelter's - Klinefelter's syndrome
laballed - labelled, leathal - lethal, lossed - lost
mannar - manner, mantained - maintained, mays - maize, minature / minituare / minture / miniture - miniature, mytated - mutated
necesserally - necessarily, negitive - negative, nessecary - necessary, neverthaless - nevertheless, non - none, noticable / noticible - noticeable
occaisons - occasions, occoured - occurred, occure - occur, opaic - opaque, outway - outweigh
parantal - parental, pathy - pathway, perental - parental, pocesses - possesses, porpouse - purpose, purpel - purple
randomn - random recessif / ressecive / ressessive - recessive, reciprical - reciprocal, relitively - relatively, rist - wrist
safter - safety, Samonella - Salmonella, seringe - syringe, spontenous - spontaneous, summerise - summarise
temparature - temperature, theorically - theoretically, threated - treated, transfere /transphere - transfer, transmiss - transmit
unables - enables, undergoe - undergo, uretus - uterus
variaty - variety, vegatative - vegetative, veiw - view, venteral - ventral , visable - visible
wales - Wales, Weenberg / Weimberg / Weinburg - Weinberg, wheather / wether/ weather - whether, wheras - whereas, wilde - wild
yeild - yield
Reader views (12)
'Fibres' seems a bad example as my 2000 dictionary lists it as a NAmer spelling, and as such is acceptable here. Try playing scrabble against a Yank, they try and get away with all sorts.
- Henry, B'ham, UK
Surely somebody at the ministry of education should take the blame for this! Or his boss?
- Jacqueline, Hampstead, London
Given that the internet is littered with the misspelling definitely and it's, it's definitely surprising that those most commonly misspelled words aren't in the above list of common mistakes!
- Dean Layne, London, UK
I work in a top London University and hardly any of the students I see have grasped basic spelling or grammar. They also have great difficulty in understanding (or even reading) documentation. If these are the 'cream of the crop' with three grade A's at A Level, God help the rest of them!
- Jane, London
British education has been killed by New Labour.
- Moses, London NW1
Seen throughout Brighton today on billboards for the local Argus:-
"School exstention rejected"
- Stuart, Brighton, UK
I was amused to hear recently from my niece, who is awaiting the results of her "A" Level geography, that the Pyrenees are in Egypt. No doubt she will receive an "A" grade!
- Phyllis, Essex, Essex
It reminds me of the gifted student who wrote to "the Principle" when applying for for a place at a top English university!
- Ken, London
In a way this is hardly surprising, I often notice misspelt words, incorrect puntuation and ambiguous phrasing among etc in signs in public places, published articles in magazines and newspapers and news sites on the internet. Last week I noticed the surname of our PM spelled as Browne several times in the same internet article!
I used to live in Japan where we used to laugh at often hilariously worded English in public places, but in the birthplace of the English language it's almost worrying that we get things so wrong.
- Headhunter, London
I would NEVER let my children into a New Labour government school!
- Georgie, London
I don't doubt it, the current education system is failing students at a very low level. In the current politically correct climate I'd be very suprised if you were able to tell pupils that they were in fact wrong otherwise they could sue you for mental distress.
- Pa Roddy, London
Being able to communicate what you are doing is as important as actually doing it: the standard of English used in a medical degree is highly relevant to passing it.
Foreign students probably have a better standard of English because they are actually taught the subject, rather than being left to pick it up from Big Brother and EastEnders.
- Roz, Chamonix, France
