A few quick thoughts about commas
My first years at the technical school speak English on average better than my second and third years at the business school. They're more fluent, and their lexis and grammar are better.
I've now learnt, however, that they can't write for shit. True, more of them are apparently dyslexic than at the business school, for instance. This island seems to me to have more dyslexia than elsewhere. But that's not even the main problem. My 16-to-18-year-old first-years quite simply can't write in sentences. I've been teaching since 1993 (with breaks, admittedly). I've never had to teach people how to write a sentence. Sure, I've often had to point out that the odd sentence isn't actually a sentence; we can all make mistakes. I've never had to start from scratch, though. That's what I'll have to do next week, I can see. (There goes the remainder of this weekend's limited time off.) I've noticed over the years that many Danes - although not all - often use commas instead of full stops, producing epic works of run-on sentences. Some of my colleagues do so, too, and one of them, a teacher of Danish, recently admitted to me to having no idea about the rules! Even my boss does it in her emails. I've always put it down to 1968 (the student riots which started in Paris, and which Danes often refer to), after which, in my understanding, focus started to be placed on content over form. But as so many older Danes seem to make the same mistake, then I just don't know what the reason is. I'd like to point out that educated Danes who don't overuse the comma describe such mistakes as mistakes. We're not talking here of standard practice being different to in English. Sadly, you will often find mistakes with commas in Danish newspapers, too. I'm referring, by the way, only to the comma being used as a full stop. The remaining Danish comma rules are a botched political compromise that can confuse anyone. Let's not go there! It might help if I provide an example. Imagine the last three sentences of my last paragraph with commas instead of full stops. You'd end up with: "I'm referring, by the way, only to the comma being used as a full stop, the remaining Danish comma rules are a botched political compromise that can confuse anyone, let's not go there!" Yuck! This is what I'm confronted with on a daily basis, both in students' essays in English and in colleagues' emails in Danish. It's driving me crazy! I now have to plan an exciting way to help my first years, whose main interest in life appears to be masturbation rather than their studies, to internalise the concept of a sentence - and to want to do so. Wish me luck!
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