"KANT spel, dont care." If that's the way students write, take heart. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India will no longer be chasing spelling mistakes while checking exam papers.
CBSE, which governs most high school exams, says it's going soft on spelling errors. This year, a set of guidelines will be issued to examiners on areas where they should ignore spelling errors. Even if a student writes horror as 'horor' in a literature exam or his comprehension passage has a couple of word jumbles, marks won't be slashed.
Pavnesh Kumar, CBSE's controller of examinations, says today's children are "extremely weak" in spelling and he blames the "change in mode of teaching at schools" for this. Spelling and dictation classes are passe and the focus is on developing communication skills.
However, the educators feel that the decision of CBSE to go easy with the English language spellings will adversely affect the teaching of the language. They argue that the role of CBSE is to formalize the learning of the English language and not to popularize it. The reason given for ignoring spelling mistakes is to make the learning easy.
"It is like putting the cart before the horse. You cannot violate the formal structure of the language. The basic norms of spellings cannot be diluted. Yes, certain improvisations are okay. In modern times, learning the language in its correct form is absolutely necessary for the youth." Says Sudhir Kumar who teaches English in the evening studies department, Panjab University.
"Spelling ability among children these days is already quite bad. CBSE's leniency is going to make it worse. We shan't have any good writers in English years down the line." says Prof. Siddiq Ali of Osmania University's department of English.
Experts believe there are two aspects of teaching English — spoken and written. While there has been stress on the former in the schools, no liberties should be taken with the latter, as it is formal and structured.
K. Subbalakshmi, who teaches English at Gitanjali school, says it is sad that educationists are toying with the building blocks of the language. "If one is learning a language, he should learn it well or else not at all. Learning a language includes listening, speaking, reading and writing. All four areas need emphasis. In writing, the correct spelling needs to be adhered to."
