One bright Friday afternoon my sophomore year of high school, my seminar teacher ended our twenty minutes of "Sustained Silent Reading" by passing out leaflets describing the "6 + 1 Traits of Writing" to all the students in the class. Not a particularly soft-spoken class under the best of circumstances, we began to--very loudly--mockingly asking what happened to the number seven. We jokingly declared ourselves to be geniuses who easily outsmarted the creators of this writing plan. Our disgruntled teacher reminded us that, overall, our student body's scores on the grammar sections of standard tests were dismal. We hushed.
She went on to explain the components and scoring of each of the seven traits which were word choice, sentence fluency, voice, presentation, organization, ideas and content, and conventions. The focus of my humble blog post today is conventions. By defintion of the creators of this "6 + 1 Traits" model, conventions "involves mechanical correctness, including spelling and grammar."
It seems today that, at least in my old high school--which is a Department of Defense school on a military base, so maybe it's just us who are behind the curve--English classes follow the "7 - 1" traits model. Grammar is not emphasized until the junior and senior years, but spelling is, for the most part, completely overlooked. A classmate of mine turned in an AP English paper, with "believe" spelled "belive" and "maintenance" spelled "maintainance," among other spelling errors. She got an A. The teacher had even neglected to point them out to her--she did not know of these errors until she asked me for my opinion and allowed me to read her paper.
A sophomore student showed me a handwritten essay (pens and notepads are unfortunately not equipped with spell check) in which he had written "else" to be "ells," "wonderful" to be "wonderfull," and "conceited" to be "conceded." (The "conceited" vs. "conceded" is a pet peeve of mine, as most of my peers seem to be blissfully unaware that "concede" is a completely separate verb from the noun "conceit.")
When I tell younger students SAT horror stories, I gleefully tell them how boring it is, how strange some of the math problems are, or how pointless the essay topics seem. With no practice for it on the PSAT, that is the section they are most anxious about--the dreaded, 8 o'clock Saturday morning essay. The thing that frightens them the most is when I tell them they can lose points for spelling errors.
Now, I am not disrespecting or denying the intelligence of the underclassman at my old highschool. They are bright, hard-working, creative, and talented. It is not a fault against them that they do not know how to spell--if spelling errors never count against your grade, or are never even pointed out, what initiative is there to pick up a dictionary?
Typos happen. Most high school level papers will have some error; the use of the wrong "their," a screw-up in an "i before e" word, or maybe even a double "l" at the end of an adjective. Still, certainly by the tenth grade, the school system will have taught the correct spelling of the word "else?"
I also understand that, on people's MySpace pages they will type in alternating upper and lower cases, substitute "you" for "u" and drop the "w" off of "know." It's a personal homepage and not an academic effort, and students of both honors and average grades have the right to spell and misspell as they see fit on their profile. If writing "i'm conceded" amuses them more than writing, "I'm conceited," it would certainly make me cringe, but ultimately, it's their choice.
Spelling should be emphasized more in the grading of papers in high school. Creativity, voice, ideas, word choice, and all the other "6 + 1" traits are fine and dandy, but their should definitely be more focus on spelling. I'm no spelling bee champion, but I'm proud to be able to spell tough words like, "believe," "maintenance," and "wonderful." Or maybe I'm just "conceded."
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