You might expect that an innate ability to be able to spell impeccably would be a prerequisite for the president of the Queen’s English Society.

But Bernard Lamb, the current holder of the title, has admitted that he is not a naturally good speller.

Dr Lamb, who is also a Professor of Genetics at Imperial College London, warns that British graduates are losing out in the job market to their foreign peers because of their poor spelling and bad grammar. Incorrect spellings are not being put right in the classroom, leaving children ignorant of their mistakes, he told The Times.

“There’s a feeling that it will harm pupils’ self-esteem. That’s rubbish. If they are never corrected by the teacher then they will never learn,” Dr Lamb said. “If they go and get jobs their employer will not hesitate to correct them.”

Dr Lamb, who taught himself to spell quite late in life, said that the foreign students he teaches are better at spelling than those who speak English as a first language because they have been taught to spell and learnt basic rules of spelling.

They are preferred by employers because their CVs do not contain errors betraying lack of attention to detail and a sloppy approach to work, he added.

Recruitment agencies report that they reject a third of candidates straight away because of errors on their application forms. However, Dr Lamb insisted that his comments — including an attack on teachers who cannot spot mistakes themselves — are not made from an ivory tower.

“I was bad at spelling,” acknowledged Dr Lamb, who presides over a society dedicated to the correct use of the English language.

He learnt to spell relatively late after a foreign student pointed out his mistakes. “It was so embarrassing that I decided to learn the rules. You can do something about it.”

He added that rules can help but must be followed to the letter. “For instance ‘i before e, except after c’ will work but only if you remember that the word must rhyme with ‘be’,” Dr Lamb said.

Studies suggest that the irregular words and proliferation of silent letters in English words make it harder to learn to spell than languages with more regular and predictable orthography, such as Norwegian, German or Dutch.

Dr Lamb said that spelling mistakes could have serious consequences. “If we don’t do something to rectify the situation there will be chaos.

“There are reports every year of patients being killed because doctors confuse the drug names.”

“When people make mistakes they end up putting one word when they mean another, like omit instead of emit. Whether you call it the wrong ‘word choice’ or an ‘error’ it gives the wrong meaning.”

The Times Spelling Bee, open to all secondary schools, is a good way of encouraging children to enjoy spelling from a young age, Dr Lamb said. Almost 500 schools have already entered the nationwide competition for 2010. The closing date for applications is December 4.

“Children should have weekly spelling tests, teaching the relevance of spelling and showing that it’s important because spelling errors change the meaning of words,” Dr Lamb said. “We can do very much better at no extra cost, just by changing an attitude.”

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