As a non native English speaker I have more difficulty constructing my sentences in ways that make sense in English. It’s a lot harder to put my ideas into text in a coherent way that sounds right than it is spelling the words correctly especially with auto correct and syntax highlighting
Comment on Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately?
Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 11 months agoIt’s the opposite. People learning English as a second language are typically much better spellers. Only a native speaker would misspell extreme that way
independantiste@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
I get the problem you’re describing, it does happen to me as well, but OP is specifically talking about spelling, which I generally do find to be worse in posts from native speakers
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Apparently this post is not an example of that issue since your sentence structure in this comment is perfect.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think you’re overestimating the average quality of English as a second/third language education. The internet continuously becomes more accessible across the globe, which has overlap with lower quality and lower frequency of English lessons. There’s more exposure from speakers that don’t use the same native alphabet as well, so use is not so universal. When speaking is the primary use of language, reading is secondary, and writing is tertiary, mistakes get interesting. It’s not too hard to hear the word “extreme” but visualize the spelling from words like dream, team, cream, or beam, all words I could see being more commonly used than extreme. It’s easier to learn “very” as a modifier to a common adjective.
Source: I work in the US with mixed central/south American-born employees and travel to Mexico often. I see casual US-sourced mistakes, of course, as well as those distinctly from Spanish-speaking writers. My Spanish is just as incorrect. If you can say it out loud and still make sense, I’ll vote for non-native English speakers every time
starlinguk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Schools literally prefer to hire foreigners as English teachers because their English is better.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Just because a school has an entire ESL department taught by ESL speakers does not mean all ESL speakers are qualified to teach ESL.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
American here:
About 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate, 2nd grade or worse reading and writing skills.
The average literacy level of Americans is between 5th and 6th grade… meaning the next 30% have the reading/writing skills of someone who only did elementary school.
These are numbers for adults 18 and up, by the way, not kids.
Almost every single person I’ve met who learned English as a second language… can speak it more fluently than most native English speakers I’ve known who grew up in America. More extensive vocabularies, better grammar, better spelling.