Published on 12, July, 2020
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.
I've never thought I was that awful, though certainly not good, but I definitely do end up baffled for no reason at times... I just had to write "square" and I had to google it to make sure I'd spelt it right as it just looked wrong, and even the spelling in Google didn't look right. It's suddenly starting to look more correct now but for some reason the Q and U just seemed weirdly out of place and wrong even though I know thats how they go...
I've had something similar happen to me in the past: I was in my GCSE English Language exam and couldn't remember how to spell "were". Bearing in mind throughout my early childhood I was hyperlexic, and as a teenager was, arguably, the most gifted in my school when it came to essay-writing. It was embarrassing, perplexing and really stressful to say the least, and after four attempts at writing "where" and knowing that didn't look right, I settled for "had been" and moved on.
I've also found since my previous burnout a few years ago, I've really struggled with my spelling and punctuation. It always used to come so naturally to me—to the extent I never had to learn or think how—it was just instinctive, whereas now I'm constantly going back and adding in commas and such like in a really inelegant and unnatural way (for me, at least). It's helping being exposed to such gifted writers in these forums as a reminder of how it should be done, so a big "thank you" to all the pendants out there. I love you guys. :-)
P.S. I've tried really hard to punctuate the above, but it doesn't quite look or feel right. Like I say, I've lost my instincts, so please feel free to correct if I've missed and/or misused anything!