Q: My teacher sent back my essay with "SPELL CHECKER!" written across the front page. I sent it back with "C.H.E.C.K.E.R" written on it but she didn't give me a better mark. What should I do next? signed StudyBuddy.
A: This appears to be a classic case of miscommunication where the sender of the message has not taken into account that you are a complete and utter twat with poor comprehension skills.
A: This appears to be a classic case of miscommunication where the sender of the message has not taken into account that you are a complete and utter twat with poor comprehension skills.
While it may be fair to assume you expected to receive a better mark for spelling the word ‘checker’ as requested by your teacher, I will assume nothing, and instead simply state the following to help you out with what you should do next:
In my opinion, both you and your teacher need to get back to the basics of the communication process as per the below diagram.
In addition to having an understanding of how communication takes place, you should have also approached your teacher to find out what was in it for you. You could have asked some simple questions of them such as:
 |
| elements of the communication process |
In addition to having an understanding of how communication takes place, you should have also approached your teacher to find out what was in it for you. You could have asked some simple questions of them such as:
- Why they wanted you to spell the word ‘checker’ in addition to having already completed the essay?
- How many extra marks was it going to be worth if you spelt the word correctly?
- Was this opportunity available to everyone or only you because your teacher thinks you’re ‘special’ and felt you need some one on one instruction?
- How would not spelling the word correctly affect your grade point average?
- If you can’t spell the word ‘checker’ correctly, how else can you build on your current relationship with your teacher and get an extra credit?
Likewise, your teacher who, at this point in time appears to being incapable of constructing a fully formed sentence with clear instructions, should have provided you with some clear guidance, or at the very least ensured that your understanding of their message when received, was indeed the same as what was intended when sent.
Instead of simply writing ‘spell checker’ on your essay and thus leaving an ineffectual statement open to interpretation and confusion, your teacher could have provided you with some additional clarification as to why he or she wanted you to spell the word in the first place. For example, ‘rather than giving you score of 7/10 for your essay, if you spell the word ‘CHECKER’ on the cover page of your essay I will give you a mark of 8/10’.
Or, perhaps StudyBuddy, the real message has been lost due to the slipshod attitude of slap-dash note written on your essay by an inept, uncaring teacher – who was probably thinking more about their social life than they were about your wellbeing at the time --, and the intention was not for you to spell the word ‘checker’, but for you to check your spelling; or indeed make use of the spell checking feature of the word processing program you were using. Obviously this uncomplicated yet logical thought didn’t quite manage to weave its way through your neocortex to the temporal lobe for processing, otherwise I wouldn’t be wasting my valuable time writing this response to your idiotic, yet equally valid question.
If the ultimate desire of your teacher was to have you spelling words correctly, then perhaps they could have assisted you by constructing a simple sentence similar to the example provided below.
Example: ‘when submitting future essays with me, please make certain that all words found in your essay are spelt correctly. This task is easily achieved by making use of the spell check feature found in most word processing programs you can used to write the essay on. If by chance your computer does not have a word processing program with spell check functions and you can’t be bothered purchasing a computer program that does, you may like to ask your parents, guardian, the person whom you live or share accommodation with, boyfriend, girlfriend or any random person on the street to purchase a quality dictionary
on your behalf.
on your behalf.In the meantime you may like to help your teacher to become more effective in communicating with others by having them read over Week 1 Lesson 7 - the communication process provided by the Center for Literacy Studies.
Do you have a question for Dorothy or some more advice for StudyBuddy?
If so leave your comments or suggestion in the comments section below.
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1 comment:
Dear Dorothy - which fabulous communication reference link should I try first?? That's quite a library, you have.
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