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Many students 'lack basic writing skills'
Published: 23 Jul 12 16:54 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/education/20120723-43923.html
Students are increasingly starting university without the reading and writing skills needed for a degree, a recent survey of German professors revealed on Monday.
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”It is also a problem that some students lack the ability to formulate ideas and to write cohesive texts,” he said.
Wolf, who is based at the University of Bayreuth, was one of 135 humanities professors who took part in the survey which up until now had remained unpublished.
The language professor has called for universities to offer “prep courses” which could bring students up to scratch before entering higher education.
Secondary and tertiary education institutions should be more aware of what their students are learning, and how. This would mean putting more emphasis on comprehension and grammar, he said.
Successfully structuring an argumentative essay was proving too tricky for many students, said Wolf. Many students also appeared to have difficulty collecting their ideas and analysing them verbally.
Part of the problem was an ever decreasing vocabulary, he suggested, which limited the ability to formulate logical arguments.
Many professors said they often spotted phrases in essays which their students had obviously heard, but not understood, and were using incorrectly.
Lack of focussed concentration was another common problem, with professors reporting that ever more students were coming into lectures with the attitude that they could just look everything up on the internet later.
The damning results have sparked debate among German academics about the standard of teaching in the country's grammar schools.
The survey was initiated at a national meeting of philosophy professors last year. Over 135 professors from 62 German universities took part in the survey.
DPA/The Local/jcw
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Your comments about this article:
I wonder how much of the errors this survey has caught are correct in on dialect of German (Plattdeutsch) but not in the standard Hochdeutsch. Platt is dying out, so that problem ought to correct itself, but only as a new one arises, and that is people of an 'immigrant background'. Sure, many of them have good command of German, but many do not.
Most are left with no choice but to earn a PhD- something that used to be far more elite than it is today. Germany and USA are becoming PhD factories as a way to get cheap research labor. Hire 2 PhDs instead of 1 researcher, or better yet use PhD students to do a job that normally a laboratory technician would do for you. It's all a vicious chain and then people wonder why the youth are having an employment crisis.
Don't be so rude if you please!
What is really appalling is that German students cannot read and write their mother language properly, we are not talking of foreign languages. However, this is nothing new and that's what auslanderus meant to say.
These are the impacts of our Internet society, a society that gives kids nothing but mobile phones and computer games.
Thank you Kloriansamel.
Good Point's!
Students at the senior level are far too busy playing games and downloading so many more "interesting" things on their laptops to bother with classwork knowing that when it's exam time, they can always find a scapegoat on whom to lay the blame for their ineptitude: the teacher.
Unfortunately too many students have shoe sizes that far exceed their IQ and the tragedy is that teachers are gagged when it comes to dealing with their parents.
Care to blame the system a little more Auslanderus?
When I took the time to get a text right I got bad marks, because the style was non-standard, didn't include all the sloppy thought of the jargon the reviewers were used to.
Real primary research violates all rules of teutonic cruelty and positive science. We need more Humboldt, less sheep and cattle.
My Sister's Kids school gives out awards every month and every kid gets one, every time!!! My nephew comes to my house and looks at my and his ancestors militay awards and my MMA trphies and doesn't get the idea that not everybody gets them. The concept of winning and losing is completely alien to him!
The score keepers are probably just mad that the Students have so much better scores in playing Grand Theft Auto, and so many more Facebook friends than they do.