Grammar and the Difference between N.Z. and U.S. Students

One question I often get is this: "How do Kiwi students differ from American students?"

I actually feel like I'm in a pretty good place to answer this, because there is only one type of university in NZ, the large public kind, and there are several kinds in America, many of which I've worked at. Going just by the quality of general undergrad populations, I've seen middle-of-the-road state schools (Kentucky), slightly behind the middle (Memphis), good private small liberal arts colleges (Occidental), and really bad public (CSU-Bakersfield). Of course, there are exceptions in all cases. I had many good students at CSUB, some of which were in fact excellent (and who should have been elsewhere probably...but working at a Cal State really opens your eyes to how many people are trapped in their situations due to factors entirely out of their control); and I had a few really poor students at Oxy. But, generally speaking, those were the trends.

So, how do I answer the above question? Kiwi students are much better prepared to enter University, while American students are harder workers and more ambitious. This is probably not too hard to explain. Kiwis invest a great deal more in education than do Americans. Kiwis also care a lot less (though certainly not not at all) about ambition and more about overall quality of life. And, again, these are only generalizations: I've seen many well-prepared American students, and several ambitious Kiwi students. This is just about the preponderance of cases.

So how does that affect me now? (I know that's what you were thinking, right?) Well, I get frustrated by students here not being as ambitious to work as hard at succeeding at projects. But I love that they're better prepared. My least favorite part of my job is grading (I love the teaching, hate the grading). It's particularly awful not so much when the student doesn't understand the material, but when they (note the pronoun) can't put together a proper sentence.

Here's an illustration. In America, every semester I'd have to lecture students that "they" is not a pronoun that stands in for a singular noun, such as "John." There's simply no numerical agreement there. But students working in English struggle to utilize gender-neutral language (upon which I insist), and they often fall into that trap. Anyway, I get badly argued papers, and badly written papers, but the misuse of "they" just drives me nuts, mainly just because it's so common.

When I pointed out the mistake to my students in the US, I got little resistance. In fact, I usually got improvement, which is nice. But here, it hardly ever comes up at all. That's the kind of pre-university preparation that really does make my job easier. Kiwis are better at writing.

Or so I thought. Another (Aussie) philosopher with a (philosophy-related) blog, Brian Weatherson, has been harping on the idea that folks like me are crazy to think that "they" cannot be used as a singular pronoun. The latest salvo is to link us to Language Log, which cites evidence as old as Shakespeare, among others, that it is not grammatically incorrect to use "they" in the singular. Apparently I also used to be out of step with The Times (though they've now retreated to re-banning "they" in the singular), and I am still wrong according to The Cambridge Grammar.

I know there are a few grammar nuts reading this (you know who you are). Feel free to chime in. For my own part, "they" in the singular just sounds wrong. But according to Language Log, I'm just an old-fashioned atavistic loony.

(N.B.: No need to point out the grammatical errors on this blog.)