This Is Seriously Appalling.

[Zen]

Nat a.k.a. MasterShaper once mentioned that the Reborn community was rather concerned about values that society nowadays may regards as obsolete, such as sportsmanship, courtesy, etc. Hence, this little post of mine is intended to bring to your attention something rather disturbing (if you weren't already aware of it, that is).

So, I was reading this month's Reader's Digest, and came across this article: [url="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/"]http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/[/url]

Apparently, RD reprinted it. But that's not the main point here.

Now, I'm not going to claim to be a master of the English language, and neither are the other two guys who are behind this joint account. But we do get along somewhat fluently in both written and spoken English, despite it not being our mother tongues (all three of us are Chinese, and it's four if you count MasterShaper).

So... just to raise awareness regarding this - I repeat, if it isn't already common knowledge - and to hopefully encourage the usage of proper language on the forums instead of that banal SMS/texting language. Not having a perfect grasp of English is acceptable since no one is perfect, but paying someone to write and edit essays for you? A doctoral thesis? Something is seriously screwed up in that equation.

What makes me sad about this is that the ghostwriter even wrote theses for pharmacology. [i]Pharmacology![/i] Good god, we could be having pharmacists out there who wouldn't know nuts about whatever medications they're being asked to dispense! As someone whose undergraduate studies have involved a brief foray into pharmacology and biochemistry, I find this particular point to be most unsettling.

Reborn's already among the best of the online leagues, so maybe it as a community should also strive to set an example for the high school members with regards to language skills Just as a possible deterrent for what the article described.

I don't think I should bring up the non-linguistic reasons for why students resort to ghostwriting - I fear I might end up in a flame war with some of the high school members around here if I did (I might be stereotyping, but no offence intended, since my general opinion of high schoolers has sadly deteriorated even though it's only been four years since I graduated from high school, myself - had some jarring experiences with the present batches in several different schools).

Sorry if the post was lengthy, but I feel this may be relevant to the community - at least, from a people's perspective.

[Noivy]

I hear you.

One of things I just can not stand is when people STILL chat speak on places where you can (and indeed should) use proper grammer. Sometimes I find myself facepalming to a friends FB post just because of that.

[Zen]

[quote name='Owen V. Seattle' timestamp='1321732107' post='20979']
I hear you.

One of things I just can not stand is when people STILL chat speak on places where you can (and indeed should) use proper grammer. Sometimes I find myself facepalming to a friends FB post just because of that.
[/quote]

Chat-speak isn't the scary bit compared to the ghostwriting, though

[Amethyst]

I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention... And yes, this is definitely more ammo to the enforcement of Rule 2~