Thursday, February 4, 2016

spelling reform: the rant of a teacher – Le Figaro

FIGAROVOX / ANALYSIS – A spelling reform agreed in 1990 will take effect in September 2016. Jean-Rémi Girard considers that this reform does not meet the spelling problems noticed in schoolchildren and be inapplicable.


Jean-Rémi Girard is French professor and vice chairman of SNALC-FGAF.


It was in 1990. That year, we suggest spelling corrections. The Academy itself accepts (without making it an obligation: the Academy is prudent …). 26 years have passed, and none of it is applied. Nobody writes “weekend”, “August” or “gun”. The Empire “contrattaque” no. Few people are “globetrotters”. In short, it will be passed very well. It was therefore urgent to impose any strength in the programs and textbooks: no doubt we had nothing else to do better

. “And therein lies one of the major recommendations of these problems: no one is able to apply them without reading the text three times”

And here we are, we teachers programs written with spelling and renovated in order to refer to them in the teaching of French. Funny thing, the editors of the programs themselves are not able to implement the reform in its entirety, passing occasionally a circumflex accent on “knowing” or “master,” or speaking in geography, “ultra territories -marins “(in new spelling is” ultramarine “)

And therein lies one of the major problems of these recommendations. nobody is able to apply them without reading three once the text and make tedious checks with a handy computer. Indeed, the new rules are filled with exceptions, which go to the absurd. Thus, the focus is suppressed circumflex over the “i” and the “u” (and too bad for Latin, that the Minister seeks to eradicate anyway). EXCEPT in the verbal endings. EXCEPT in certain words to be confused with others such as “mature” and “safe”. EXCEPT that removes the still feminine and plural: ripe fruit, ripe apples! I’m sure she is safe! Similarly, it harmonizes the verb conjugation and -eler -eter. EXCEPT to throw and call. He labeled them (in practice, when we wrote “a label” …), but he throws! And we multiply the examples

. “This reform is not reform: these are recommendations that do not invalidate however the classic spelling”

on the other hand, this reform is not reform: these are recommendations that do not invalidate however the classic spelling. Thus, we come to the coexistence of two states of language, and is highly likely to give everyone a special value (as distinguished, it is always at one time or another a classification between top and bottom, in such cases). And while some conscientious professors will remove the caret, wicked reactionaries who run the highest level will be happy to make this distinction an endpoint or a social marker inratable almost. And oddly, these are definitely those who write “appearing” and “a priori” that will win in this game …

Last but not least, but what is the usefulness of the thing ? Why do we torture in a quarter century with the recommendations that respond at all to the real spelling problems facing our students and the adults they become? The question is not to write “water lily” or “centipede”, but rather to stop the growth of “ate it”, the “I have seen”, the “they sang you” and whatnot. But as it became criminal to teach a structured way grammar (word that my union, the SNALC, helped reintroduce in extremis in future programs), we do not take the way.

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