Other forums..

[Gwen11ian]

I really enjoy this forum.. and have always found it a wealth of information. People are calm, considerate, and their posts are legible. They utilize spell check.

I'm currently looking to join a pregnancy forum.. and I've searched for a few weeks now without any luck. The posters all seem nice enough.. the problem is I can't understand half of what they write! Abbreviation and acronyms I'm okay with.. as long as they don't make up the entire sentence. What I can't stand though is lack of capitalization, punctuation, and simple spelling errors. For example: "i wont worrie..i was like that with my son andi loved it...but ones i hit 6mos i got sick the whole month and after that i was fine...dont worrie to much..." and "dnt really kno what to say hun except i feel ur pain". Then there are the one's I can't even understand, written in some sort of secret text code?! Also, a few smiley faces are good.. but when half the paragraph is jumping up and down and zooming left to right.. then I feel that's probably a step too far.

Sorry for the rant. I miss type, miss spell, and generally use far too many apostrophe marks.. but I do try. If someone does notice me start to type questions over the next eight months such as "wat r u goin to plant nxt to ur korn " please take me out back and put me out of my misery.

PS. Just found out GYO limits you to four smilies.. good on you!

[zazen999]

Is there a literacy forum that you could join, just to rant about the pregnancy forum that you want to post on?

[Jeanied]

Maybe we need a 'Families' forum on here - then there could be a special pregnancy thread for all our productive grapes! We could put all the hatches and matches on there!

[HotStuff]

That'll be all those teenage mums to be, who only know text speak

Oh, and Congratulations on your good news.

[Snadger]

That'll be all those teenage mums to be, who only know text speak

Oh, and Congratulations on your good news.

I agree...........hopefully they'll grow out of it.

[sarraceniac]

I agree...........hopefully they'll grow out of it.

Bet u a pnd thay dn't.

[Nicos]

Don't you lot get Ollie started!!!!

[Paul Sill]

My wife uses AskBaby.com - Pregnancy Guide, Baby Advice, Baby Clothing, Baby Names, Maternity . she found it when she was 1st pregnant, still uses it now little uns here. Its got a lot more help than just the forum, dont know what its like though.

[OllieMartin]

Don't you lot get Ollie started!!!!

I live in Hull which has one of the poorest education statistics in the country. The most common errors I notice here are people muddling up the words "being" and "been" and I had a colleague who couldn't tell the difference between "has" and "as" because she didn't pronounce the "h". However she did know this was a problem and used to ask me to proof read all her work.

There is a flip side to this though. At least people are able to communicate. It may be in a b*stard language, but that doesn't really differ from thick Scottish or Cockney.

[Two_Sheds]

The problem, I really believe, is with people who never read. Not just books, they don't read newspapers or anything. They can't know how a word should be pronounced (has/ as, been/being, could of/could have) if they never see it written down.

I have a child in my class who spells everything as he hears it. He is 10 but has a reading age of 6, despite our best efforts and one-to-one tuition.

Coowel
Hows
Pcsh


(cool, house, picture)

It's a struggle. How's he ever going to fill in a job application, or read a prescription, a timetable, official letters, contracts (mortgage, loans etc)? He's falling behind in every subject, because he can't read the instructions to begin with.

[OllieMartin]

I agree TS, reading is definitely a biggy.
I'm not a big reader these days. I can't really get engrossed in a book and almost never read the paper, but when I was young I was practically forced to read.
As a lover of computer games (even having a degree in their design) I'm loathe to admit it, but they have a lot to answer for when it comes to child literacy.

[Jeanied]

I have a child in my class who spells everything as he hears it. He is 10 but has a reading age of 6, despite our best efforts and one-to-one tuition.

Coowel
Hows
Pcsh


(cool, house, picture)

Those are typical errors of a youngster who does not understand segmentation or syllabification of words - if you can teach him that, he may stand a chance of catching up.

[Two_Sheds]

Those are typical errors of a youngster who does not understand segmentation or syllabification of words - if you can teach him that, he may stand a chance of catching up.

We're trying! We've been trying for ages. Thing is, he refuses to read, or try to read. He has a 1000 excuses for why he doesn't do his (recommended daily 5 or 10 mins) of reading at home.

This one is the lowest ability, but we have scores of others who are also poor or very poor readers. We can't give them all one-to-one reading tuition. Our (unpaid, voluntary) helpers are already busy all the hours that they come in to school.

[Jeanied]

Well - the three words you posted show that he knows inital sounds ok and he has had a stab at the right vowel sound (except picture). He has learned something! (My days teaching in Suffolk were spent working with kids who did not really want to be there in school at all, but they were a little older!)

[Glutton4...]

The problem, I really believe, is with people who never read. Not just books, they don't read newspapers or anything. They can't know how a word should be pronounced (has/ as, been/being, could of/could have) if they never see it written down.

I have a child in my class who spells everything as he hears it. He is 10 but has a reading age of 6, despite our best efforts and one-to-one tuition.

Coowel
Hows
Pcsh


(cool, house, picture)

It's a struggle. How's he ever going to fill in a job application, or read a prescription, a timetable, official letters, contracts (mortgage, loans etc)? He's falling behind in every subject, because he can't read the instructions to begin with.

I totally agree. I had a colleague who admitted to having never read a book since leaving school - couldn't spell to save his life.

As for the child TS, I'd be thinking Dyslexia? Especially the spelling of picture. I have a friend who's Dyslexic.