English as a compulsory subject

**Moonbear** · Jul30-06, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Hawknc

O rly? That's the first I've heard of that. No courses I know of down here require you to take general subjects outside of your faculty. From looking at the UNSW website, it appears that the GE program is different to the US model in that they're still part of and related to your faculty, just not necessarily your major. Would that be accurate? (e.g. Engineering's general subjects are units like "solar cars", "computer game design", etc., and science has units such as astronomy, aviation and cosmology.)

Did you read the page on their site that's titled "General Education?" Each faculty offers Gen Ed courses, but the idea of Gen Ed is to get breadth of knowledge outside your area of specialization. You could contact the school to be certain, but it sounds to me like there would be restrictions preventing you from using courses in your own specialization (major) to satisfy Gen Ed requirements.

They have a very good explanation of why they are required as well:

UNSW requires that undergraduate students undertake a structured program in General Education as an integral part of studies for their degree.

The University believes that a general education complements the more specialised learning undertaken in a student's chosen field of study and contributes to the flexibility which graduates are increasingly required to demonstrate.

Employers also repeatedly point to the complex nature of the modern work environment and advise that they highly value graduates with the skills provided by a broad general education, as well as the specialised knowledge provided in more narrowly defined degree programs.

The General Education Program at UNSW intends to broaden students' understanding of the environment in which they live and work and to enhance their skills of critical analysis.

http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/gene...=Undergraduate

**wolram** · Jul30-06, 12:53 PM

One thing that should be weaned out of english, is terms like,( i have got),I
i guess HRW would say different but to me the term is nonsense.

**Moonbear** · Jul30-06, 05:39 PM

Originally Posted by wolram

One thing that should be weaned out of english, is terms like,( i have got),I
i guess HRW would say different but to me the term is nonsense.

Unless you're using "got" as a noun (coining a new term perhaps), then that's not correct English at all. It's just "I have..."

**Chi Meson** · Jul30-06, 07:11 PM

Originally Posted by wolram

One thing that should be weaned out of english, is terms like,( i have got),I
i guess HRW would say different but to me the term is nonsense.

I've got other examples of that kind of thing (note irony):
can we all stop using the word "usage"? It's "use."
And don't every say "thusly" in front of me, you'll lose your teeth. Say "thus."
And I hope no one here has ever said "the thing of it is, is..."
I'll stop now [/RANT]

**Soilwork** · Jul30-06, 10:40 PM

I think that you (Moonbear) slightly misinterpreted what the original poster was saying. He knows that his English isn't great and that was his complaint. In most schools in Australia you are taught crappy analytical writing of texts and Australian soapies without any emphasis on how to write well. Nevermind the fact that very few teachers care for the correct use of English words or punctuation in your writing. I see this analytical writing as useful if you are wanting to pursue the arts, but it shouldn't take up the whole syllabus as a result. They should incorporate some teaching of the English language in there as well.

I agree that English is an essential subject to learn, but as it stands now, I think that it should no longer be compulsory since it <b>only</b> focuses on symbolic analysis of texts and things like that. As the syllabus is now, it has nothing to do with teaching the English language.

To have people called illiterate just because they can't analyse the text in the way the teacher wanted is gross misuse of the term. I'm the only one in my family with considerably bad English skills and I was the only one <b>not</b> to get the notice "Your son is illiterate". Their writing skills are far superior to mine yet they were told they were illiterate??

**Gokul43201** · Jul30-06, 10:46 PM

I like 'thusly'. It's 'thus' with elan. 'Thus' is a common opener, 'thusly', a nice finish - nicer even than Michelob.

What really gets me though, is when people use double quotation marks when they should be using single quotation marks.

**dansydney** · Jul31-06, 01:03 AM

I agree with moonbear that my writing skills aren't too great. This is what I'm talking about though because nothing we learn from year 8 onwards has anything to do with correct writing and as I said punctuation and spelling are not necessary to gain top marks. I agree English should be compulsory if the syllabus is changed dramatically.

**Hawknc** · Jul31-06, 03:28 AM

Moonbear - English is absolutely essential to science. I said as much earlier and I think we're on the same wavelength in that respect. But these are quite basic skills we're talking about and they need to be taught in high school, not university. Many courses simply won't accept you unless you have a reasonable score in English, but - as is the topic of the thread - that's not really useful if high school English isn't teaching you the right material.

As for UNSW's GE program...well, astronomy ain't English, if you get my meaning. I see the benefit of doing subjects that broaden your degree outside of your specialisation, and though I don't think it should be compulsory I do encourage it, but that's a far cry from having to do non-science units within a science degree.

~~Schrodinger's Dog~~ · Jul31-06, 04:19 AM

Originally Posted by Rach3

You don't think you'll ever need to communicate clearly in writing? Eh, don't worry, you've still got 4-10 years of school ahead of you to change your mind about that.

On a related topic, your post here is much too long to be in a single paragraph, to the point that most people wouldn't attempt to read it in its present form.

I get people say this to me, but a paragraph is only warranted for a change of subject so in this singular case he has used the correct English, but of course it's easier to read(by people who are critical of such things) So technically it should be broken into sperate paragraphs even though it would in fact be bad English. Who cares about grammar though

Personally I did badly at English because they focused on punctuation and spelling, so although my work was good, they couldn't understand some of it so I got marked down. Thus I never did well at English untill I learned to write literately which took about I would say 30 years. I am now 34

I hated English, I never got it and consequently never did very well at it, but I can see that it is a foundation for every other subject, if you can't communicate effectively in science then no one will read your papers, let alone understand them

Most people moan about maths, after all when will anyone need that calculus crap

Oh shazbat! I need it now

ek · Jul31-06, 04:53 AM

At my high school, English was the only subject that was mandatory in all five years. And unlike some of the other experiences expressed here, a lot of my english in high school was fundamental english. I remember my grade 9 english class, grammar was absolutely hammered into our brains. Even in grade 12 we would have separate weekly grammar, spelling and vocabulary tests at the start of class, in addition to the regular curriculum (books, essays, short stories etc).

And at the university I attend (Victoria), first year english is (the only course that is) required for everybody, regardless of department/faculty, unless the student has scored above 90% on the Provincial Exam in grade 12. Only about 5% of the students achieve this mark. Fortunately, I was one of these students, the only one in my class. That meant no more english for me!

For the record, I really enjoyed high school english and some of the books we had to read had a positive impact on my life. If I wasn't so dead-set on getting a degree in Astronomy, I would have definitely considered a degree in english.

**scorpa** · Jul31-06, 07:46 AM

From highschool onwards I have always found English to be fairly useless. We were taught essentially no grammar, punctuation....ect but instead analyzed a variety of stories, poems and plays and were asked to write essays on a certain topic related to these stores. In high school we could at least attain a good mark as long as we had valid proof for our opinions, however in University I found that unless our analysis agreed with that of the professor you were not likely to get a good mark. I have made it through every English class I have taken with very good marks but feel I have not learned anything useful, and thus did not enjoy the classes at all. I feel that I would have benefited much more from a technical writing class more suited to science/engineering students that had more emphasis on writing proper lab reports, journal articles, and of course proper grammar and punctuation.

**J77** · Jul31-06, 07:54 AM

A career in science and being able to write well, come hand-in-hand. My first, and longest lasting, impression when reviewing scientific articles is the author's use of English. If the article is badly written, chances are, I'll reject it.

Plus, during your English lessons, you were probably taught how to use paragraphs...

...which are pretty helpful on message boards

**Chi Meson** · Jul31-06, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by Gokul43201

I like 'thusly'. It's 'thus' with elan. 'Thus' is a common opener, 'thusly', a nice finish - nicer even than Michelob.

What really gets me though, is when people use double quotation marks when they should be using single quotation marks.

Well if you're talking about beer, you can do as you wish, "thus."

As far as the quotes go, you are probably following the British rules (doubles within the singles) which is opposite from the American rules (singles within the doubles). This was decided by the early typesetters and the choices they made also determined where the period goes (if a sentence ends in a quote).
'British'.
"American."

Evidently, the decision was made by typesetters to protect the delicate "." (NOW where do I put the period? I know, I'll add a parenthesis).
With the little dot all by itself next to a space, it tended to get crushed by the ink rollers. Placing it inside the double quotes made it last longer. (This is what was told to me by my Editing professor).

**J77** · Aug1-06, 03:18 AM

Originally Posted by Chi Meson

Evidently, the decision was made by typesetters to protect the delicate "."

Nah - the decision was made to annoy people who write papers in perfect English, only for them to be bastardised by the American type-setters

~~Schrodinger's Dog~~ · Aug1-06, 04:24 AM

You don't have to put a full stop in at the end of a quote or a passage of speech I think e.g.

Adam walked along the path where he met suzy 'Hi suzy'

'Hi Adam'

'What's knew'

'not much'

or as Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe"

I believe it's because the quotes already denote a start or finish break such as a comma bracket or full stop( it's the same reason you don't put a full stop at the End of a bracket, I think) See.

AFAIK anyway but then I've never been accused of writing good English so I really wouldn't know. This thread has turned into US/UK English 101. Good work

**star.torturer** · Aug1-06, 04:30 AM

who speaks beter american?
clasic bad joke coming up
i am fluent in 2 languages, english and bad inglish.

sory i had to put it

im absolutly crap at english, but thats cause i have dyspraxia, me complaining about my self again, oh no.

actualy Mr Shrodinger's Dog, you are wrong, they do need punctuation at the end of the sentence. even with quotes and brackets