Those of you upset by the new SAT's essay section will be apoplectic when you hear that raters of the longer writing task of an exam for British 14-year-olds will no longer count off for spelling errors:
Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks. The rule, issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, means that pupils could spell every word wrongly in the most significant piece of writing that they are required to do and yet still receive full marks.
Horrible, yet a tad hyperbolic. Spelling ability is not totally unrelated to other areas of writing ability, so it's unlikely that a student who spells three-letter words wrong will gain high marks for sentence structure, organization, and punctuation. The student who does perfectly except for spelling errors will most likely be that brilliant child whose brain remembers words in an, er, creative sense (yes, Devoted Reader J, I'm talking to you!). My guess is that most papers riddled with spelling errors will be riddled with all kinds of other errors as well.
However, one can argue - as the traditionalists are now doing - that it's dangerous not to grade spelling because it sends the message that spelling isn't important:
The revelation of the "spelling free-for-all" in the hour-long paper has angered traditionalists who say that children should be penalised for poor spelling. Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "Spelling and grammar are essential to good English and important in other subjects. The exam watchdog should be ensuring that proper marks are given for these. Not judging spelling on such an important paper sends the message to teacher and pupils that it does not matter, and that is certainly what employers are finding."Posted by kswygert at May 16, 2005 12:37 PMAndrew Cunningham, an English teacher at Charterhouse and a former GCSE examiner, agreed that poor spelling was not being tackled. "This downgrading of spelling does not surprise me. All teachers are having to spend time going over these basics, which should have been sorted out at an earlier age."