English teacher treasures every correct apostrophe she finds

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Year 12 English teacher Gwen Banyon is no stranger to typos. Her classes over the years have been filled with underachievers throughout her 25 year career. That's why this year she has made a vow to appreciate and treasure every correct apostrophe she finds tucked inside her students' essays.

"I've finally realised that I can't help them anymore. They're on their own now; all I can do is congratulate them every time they happen upon correct punctuation" said the 53 years old. "Their grammar, spelling and style of prose is still terrible, but I will now be able to smile at their accidental achievement".

Experts say that education standards have dropped so far that so called 'accidental achievements' should be cherished, however minor they may be. "There was a time when teachers simply expected students to be able to use punctuation and grammar as a matter of course" said Education Specialist Dale Edwards. "But now, with the popularity of internet and mobile phone shorthand, adolescent comprehension of English is pretty much shithouse".

This is only the most recent in a slew of English teachers lowering their standards in order to cope with the poor state of education now faced in schools. Last year, English teacher Trudy Hall found satisifcation in a semi-colon used correctly by one student in a 500 word essay. "Since I can no longer feel good about getting my students to learn proper English, I'm now scaling down and being pretty impressed by that lone semi-colon" she said at the time.

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