Literacy spells trouble for journalists

Declining literacy standards among Irish school-leavers have prompted a leading Dublin university to allocate more time to the teaching of basic writing skills to first-year students.

Dublin City University’s BA in Journalism programme is to place greater emphasis on writing skills to help students overcome what the college has described as “gaps in their grasp of basic English, including spelling, grammar, punctuation and word usage”.

The college said lecturers had noticed growing numbers of students were having difficulties.

From next autumn, the time spent on the course module covering English language usage will increase by 50 per cent in an attempt to address the issue.

Patrick Kinsella, head of the School of Communications at DCU, said lecturers were spending an inordinate amount of time correcting errors and improving the basic writing skills of students.

“CAO applicants for DCU journalism must have a B in Honours English in the Leaving Certificate. Points for journalism rose last year to 445, so we’re still getting very bright, creative and able students,” Mr Kinsella said.

“But despite their great exam results, many students still have significant weaknesses when it comes to the basics. Punctuation and spelling are problematic for some, while others have gaps in their application of grammar or use words wrongly,” he said.

Mr Kinsella, who is also chairman of the BA in Journalism programme, said an increase in the tuition hours devoted to writing skills was vital if graduates were to meet the “high standards of the journalism profession”.

He said common errors by students included mixing up “quite” and “quiet”, “libel” and “liable”, “where” and “were”, “there” and “their” and “principle" and "principal”.

A 2009 OECD report – published last December – found an alarming decline in literacy standards among Irish secondary-level students.

The report indicated the ranking of Irish teenagers had fallen from fifth to 17th since 2000, the sharpest decline of any developed country.

“From this autumn, we’ll be putting more effort into improving accuracy and awareness of grammar and ensuring that as professional journalists our graduates produce flawless copy,” Mr Kinsella said.