BBC’s My Story Competition: No Need to Write English
Receiving the entry form for the BBC’s My Story competition, I had a nasty shock. Red letters at the top told me to “Remember, judging is based on how great the story is, not on grammar and spelling.” I suppose this attitude coincides with the recent development that you don’t need to talk proper English to be a speaker either.
There was a time not so long ago when the BBC was broadcasting to the world, and it listened. This was partly due to the quality of their broadcasts, but mainly due to the use of Received Pronunciation which was understood by any person having learned English in one way or another. While the BBC’s speakers are still mostly understandable even though they have not a clue of RP, to follow ITV’s morning programme you have to be born and brought up in Hull to understand the lingo.
The rapid deterioration of the spoken word in broadcasting seemingly goes hand in hand with this newest proof of how English is wilfully dismantled. While English once was the first language in the world, lowering the standards of its use to the level of analphabets will soon make it useless to businesses and governments, as the proper sense of words and their history will be completely lost. The only viable export England still has, an internationally understood language, is being destroyed by government, councils, and broadcasters alike.
Tests done by final-year students show that foreign students made 18.8 spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors per exam paper on average, while the native English speakers clocked up an astonishing 52.2 at the same exams. Were you considering coming to England to learn English? You really should reconsider.
The latest straw in this development is the BC’s public statement that you don’t need to be able to write to be a writer. It has put me off entering my own work into the competition, though while I write this article I am already dithering on the issue. Maybe an entry would be worth the while. It would read along these following lines:
Deer bee bee sea
Eye d side id too end there Ur con petition wiz my storey. Yew staid inn Ur Aintree form dad pro per spell ling ease knot nay cess sari, butt eye Czech Ed Avery word alder same. I sink dad righting prop early ease ass ant shell in litter at sure end eye hop dad yew Will chews my egg sell ant were cover pea pal wiz Aintree’s writ tan Annie witch whey. I Sir ten Lee proof wiz mice Tory dad eye am wary well Abel to Dee sting wish bit wean a pee ant Ann axe. Hour grey test Poe ate shakes beer sad Kuwait rite lea: “All wellies ass and swell.”
Sin sere Ali, Luke as
Here is a little reading help:
Dear BBC
I decided to enter your competition with my story. You state in your entry form that proper spelling is not necessary, but I checked every word all the same. I think that writing properly is essential in literature and I hope that you will choose my excellent work over people with entries written any which way. I certainly prove that I am very well able to distinguish between a P and an X. Our greatest poet Shakespeare said quite rightly: “All well is as ends well.”
Sincerely, Lucas
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Tags: BBC, competition, English, language, Literature, Received Pronunciation, Shakespeare, Spelling, Writing
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October 8th, 2009 at 6:52 am
Boy you must really hate James Joyce.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Great article and you could certainly make your point with your entry. On the other hand if you sent in a well written submission then maybe they might understand how foolish they were in saying that spelling and grammar did not count.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Thanks for sharing
October 12th, 2009 at 5:33 am
May be they don’t want to lose a brilliant idea just because it’s writer isn’t very good in English. They are looking for great stories!
October 14th, 2009 at 10:34 am
And as we slip from 4th place for education to 19th (!!!), the only logical conclusion is that there is some sort of plan to eradicate not only Christianity, but the English language,too. Perhaps, in five years time, there will be nothing left of what we once called England…
November 6th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Dear Lucas
I think you have misinterpreted the purpose of the My Story campaign. It is not a writing competition; it’s a search to find remarkable real-life stories. It may surprise you to learn that many of these may come from people who have not had the benefit of a first-class education. However, they should not be deterred from submitting their fascinating stories because of this. The final stories will be ghost-written, as very many biographies of interesting but not necessarily literary-minded folk are.
I hope this clarifies things for you.
Best wishes
Hayley
November 6th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
2 Hayley: thank you for the comment; you might have mistaken the intent of my article: it is not aimed at people who have the misfortune of being subjected to what the British want to call an education, but at hopeless teachers, ridiculous schools, and a government made up of illiterate nincompoops setting up the rules.
If the BBC really had the aim you graciously infer to, they should not subject illiterate people to write at all but should allow submittal by oral means, as most pupils leave British schools as analphabets anyhow.
In fact, Hayley, this is just one of my many articles dealing with the intentional dismantling of the English language by government or its subsidiaries.