During the months of May and June, with the proximity of the expected quotation With the PAU, most of the national media echoed this issue. El Mundo headlined its article about the new university entrance exam as follows: "How much do spelling mistakes subtract from the PAU? In some subjects, spelling mistakes can penalize up to 20% of the grade of the exercise." El País also opened its chronicle with a reference letter similar: “How many points are penalized for spelling mistakes in the PAU exams?”

At first glance, it might seem that spelling matters , or at least the penalty for not taking care of it. But do we really care about spelling? If we read beyond the headline, we see that spelling mistakes are only penalized in some subjects: up to 10% in History of Philosophy , 15% in language Foreign and 20% in language Castilian or other language Co-official. To clarify, this penalty not only refers to spelling but also to the coherence, cohesion, and grammatical and lexical correctness of the texts produced. All of these aspects are included, incidentally, in the Royal Decree regulating the new PAU .

Curiously, all the subjects that assess all of the above are in the field of "letters" . Is it perhaps that in "science" subjects writing is not done? Is only the language of mathematics used? Focusing on our students, what message are we transmitting to them? That they should only take care of spelling in certain subjects because in the others it "doesn't matter" how they write? Or is linguistic correctness an issue exclusively for the Humanities ?

Beyond the penalties for fouls in the previously called university entrance exam , the truth is that a large part of the student body enters university with a poor level of written expression .

Fortunately, in some Degrees university students, at least Education , a compulsory subject worth 6 ECTS credit on oral and written expression is taught in the first year. However, as a teacher, I constantly ask myself if I really should dedicate several classes, for example, to explaining the rules of accentuation or, worse still, to teaching what an acute, sympathetic, or proparoxytone word is. And the answer is a resounding yes. My students are studying teaching and pedagogy, so how can we not teach them to write correctly? How can we not review the spelling rules if they haven't mastered them?

As those responsible for the training As future teachers and educators, we have an obligation to train linguistically competent teachers . We can't look the other way, ignore what they should know, pretend the problem doesn't exist, and jump straight to explaining Academic Writing or APA standards. We can't put the cart before the horse: we must ensure it has a solid foundation.

And be careful, this is not an exclusive responsibility of the faculty of subjects with a "linguistic" or more "theoretical" component, is a task for the entire teaching staff . The coordination and unification of criteria in the teaching and assessment of written expression are essential for the student body Become aware of its importance and realize that writing well—or at least without mistakes—is valued in both academic and professional settings. And even on a staff level, I'd venture to say.