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Nightmare English test

Robert124
over 4 years ago

Here is an update of how my various employment advisors are still struggling to get me into paid work.

My latest advisor sent me to a training company who insisted I take their online functional English test.

What a nightmare,  I tried my best and my best was a disaster. 

Here's a photo of my results screen.

41% for spelling,  punctuation and grammar!   I never realised I was that bad.  

Some of the questions were torture.  Such as the comma question,  I was given a paragraph to read and told to find the five comma mistakes, where commas where either missing or superfluous. Oh my first reading I couldn't identify a single mistake.

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  • over 4 years ago
    aidie said:
    everyone is bad at grammar, and those good at it are usually annoying

    Indeed, so my apologies in advance for being a bit of a grammar pedant in what follows.

    "Functional Skills English"?  Surely that should be "Functional English Skills", "Functional Skills - English", or "Skills (Functional English)", or maybe there's a dialect or jargon that I've never heard of called "[Functional Skills] English" - the seemingly random word order in the screenshot makes it a bit hard to tell.

    "English Initial Assessment"? Well, it's nice to know that your "initial assessment" will be a patriotic one, but what is being assessed?

    "Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar"? Personally, I think that an "Oxford comma" before the "and" would be so much nicer.

    Maybe people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!

    The only spelling mistake in your post is quite obviously just a typo. I could correct a handful of technical grammar errors if I were being picky (I won't, because that would be incredibly rude - and someone might then be tempted to correct mine!). However, I certainly don't recall ever having trouble understanding any of your posts - and I can't think what else "functional" might mean in relation to language!

    Still, if your English is really that bad, they'd better rush you onto a remedial English course sharpish - for your sake, of course; nothing to do with the big fat cheque from the DWP!

Reply
  • over 4 years ago
    aidie said:
    everyone is bad at grammar, and those good at it are usually annoying

    Indeed, so my apologies in advance for being a bit of a grammar pedant in what follows.

    "Functional Skills English"?  Surely that should be "Functional English Skills", "Functional Skills - English", or "Skills (Functional English)", or maybe there's a dialect or jargon that I've never heard of called "[Functional Skills] English" - the seemingly random word order in the screenshot makes it a bit hard to tell.

    "English Initial Assessment"? Well, it's nice to know that your "initial assessment" will be a patriotic one, but what is being assessed?

    "Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar"? Personally, I think that an "Oxford comma" before the "and" would be so much nicer.

    Maybe people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!

    The only spelling mistake in your post is quite obviously just a typo. I could correct a handful of technical grammar errors if I were being picky (I won't, because that would be incredibly rude - and someone might then be tempted to correct mine!). However, I certainly don't recall ever having trouble understanding any of your posts - and I can't think what else "functional" might mean in relation to language!

    Still, if your English is really that bad, they'd better rush you onto a remedial English course sharpish - for your sake, of course; nothing to do with the big fat cheque from the DWP!

Children