BRITISH students have a poorer grasp of spelling, grammar and the English language than their peers from overseas, research by Imperial College, London, suggests.

They are more likely to make basic errors in their written work than those for whom English is a second language.

A study by Bernard Lamb, a reader in genetics at the department of biological sciences, confirms what many employers have long suspected: that many graduates cannot express themselves clearly.

Dr Lamb had become so irritated by students misspelling words that he subjected their mistakes to a test. Taking eight “ordinary” and six scientific words, he found that in a sample of 650 students, British undergraduates appeared sloppier about the written word than students from abroad.

“Overseas students were significantly better at spelling and grammar than British students,” he told The Times Higher Education Supplement. “The overseas students have generally had more grammar teaching, more correction of errors and more emphasis on correctness.”

Dr Lamb also found that 78 per cent of British students mistakenly included an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun “its”, compared with 25 per cent of overseas students.

With the word “separate”, 53 per cent of British students, who must achieve at least one A-level A grade and two Bs to qualify for the Imperial College course, spelt it wrongly — with an e in the middle — but none from overseas did.

“How are these students going to spell complicated names, such as Drosophila melanogaster, the scientific term for a fruit fly, when they make errors such as putting double letters for single letters, confusing words and placing apostrophes incorrectly?” Dr Lamb said.

The implication was that British students needed to be corrected more in school and to understand the importance of why scientists, above all, needed to be accurate in their writing.

“The national curriculum is good as it stands — on spelling and grammar — but it’s not being implemented,” he said. “If I see a semi-colon used properly it makes my day. But people need to understand it is serious when they say haemophilia effects rather than affects clotting of the blood, because it means the exact opposite.”

Two years ago, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority published a 60-page guide aimed at helping secondary school teachers to reverse the trend of sloppy language. Such efforts to revive the rules of grammar and spoken English have been hampered by many teachers being taught in the free-thinking 1970s: they do not know the rules themselves.

Gareth Hardwick, honorary secretary to the Queen’s English Society, said that the poor language skills of today’s youth were a matter of national concern but were being addressed.

“We went through a bad patch, but now people recognise it is important,” he said. “Just as people like to have elegant and beautiful clothes, they recognise we can also have elegant and beautiful English.”

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