My English Teachers
I have had several instances of run-ins with grammar. All of them have impacted how I relate to grammar now. My first real recollection of grammar was when I was in elementary school. From what I have learned since, no one else has been taught that way. We jump to when I was in 11th grade for my next memorable association with grammar. For some reason, this teacher felt the need for all 11th graders to know what direct objects, participles, and prepositions were (along with all the other grammar related things). And finally, just a few semesters ago, I had a professor here at Va Tech who deemed all papers written unworthy of correct sentence structure until you learned what he had to teach. I learned the most from him, and future writings incorporate what I learned from him.
I went to elementary school in Pennsylvania many years ago. When we were learning how to spell, we were taught all the special characters that are included in a dictionary following every word that shows you how to pronounce a word. We learned the carrot, short and long vowel sounds, where the emphasis should be placed on a word, and how to divide a word at the end of a sentence. Whenever I mention having learned to spell this way, most people say they have never learned this. My kids, who are in high school now, have never learned this. I feel privileged to have learned this at a young age, but I have forgotten most of what I learned. But, when I open a dictionary to look up a word, the first place I look after I find the word is to see how it is pronounced. I love reading the dictionary.
Then, we moved to Virginia when I was in 3rd grade. When I got to 11th grade English, I was like every other student. I hated English class! It was all so confusing. Who cares what the difference is between a direct object, participle, or predicative complement? I can put sentences together, and can usually tell if something is wrong with how it is constructed. But dissecting a sentence will send me into a tailspin! I much preferred the literature part of English class; but this particular teacher decided we all needed to learn grammar. She would give a test and most of the students didn’t pass it. So, she would go over the material again. By the time she started taking grades on the tests, I was making 100’s. By the end of my junior year, I received the 11th grade English award. I had the highest English grade in my whole class. That was very exciting to me. I guess at that point, grammar had started to make sense, and started me on the path I am on now.
And finally we advance to a few semesters ago here at Va Tech. All of my papers up to this point were mid to high A’s. I felt very confident about writing and getting my point across in a concise, articulate way. Then, I got this professor. Oh, my!! My first paper was a C!! I couldn’t believe it. Every other word—it seemed like—was marked out and something else suggested in its place. I learned about transitional words and phrases, how to correctly use a semicolon, and so many other rules. His big contention was wordiness. I thought I wrote succinctly before him; I had no idea how much better I could get at it. I dreaded writing his papers, but I learned so much from him by paying attention to his notes and using his guidelines. I now enjoy writing papers so much more than I did; I feel more confident about getting a paper started, and following through with it.
So—in conclusion—I have taken all these instances of grammar rules and regulations to heart. Each person involved has made me a better writer, a better thinker. Whether I am writing a paper, or reading a book, in the back of my mind is, “I wonder what so and so would that of that!” Judging from what I have seen so far in this class, this professor and class will rank among these others as impacting my future thinking of grammar. I am looking forward to learning even more than I have already, and hopefully not being as confused about it all as I am right now. All these terms and rules are flying around in my head and I don’t think I can make them stop spinning long enough to figure out what I am supposed to do with them! Hopefully—eventually—I can make sense of it and excel in this class, as in my others.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
What is it about grammar that gets on your nerves??!!
What Is It About Grammar That Gets On Your Nerves??!!
This is a blog that has been assigned in my English class. If after reading this blog you feel the need to leave comments, please do so. I would love to hear your thoughts as well.
Until I started this class, I never really thought about grammar. I can speak, write, and read well enough, but hearing this professor talk about grammar has made me realize there is more to grammar than what I originally surmised. This blog will be discussing “What is it about grammar that gets on your nerves??!!” Up until we took the huge grammar test the other day, I would have said very little about grammar gets on my nerves; now, I have a long list of things!
My first thought about grammar that gets on my nerves is trying to read something someone else has written that has errors in it. I don’t look for these errors; they just jump out at me. Reading news alerts, emails—or even books—can be very aggravating for me. Most of these don’t have spelling errors in them; several are just the wrong use of a word, or words in the wrong order. Even punctuation—or lack thereof—can catch my attention and derail my train of thought on what I am reading. Most of the errors cannot be caught by spell check because they are a word—they are just not the right word. Some examples are “I was they’re, too. “ This is the wrong one—it’s the contraction for they are. The correct word would be there. Another example is “I want to go to the go to beach.” I know what you mean, but there are too many words in the sentence to make it correct. Also, leaving words out doesn’t help me either. I spend time trying to figure out what you meant—or what word should go there—and then I have forgotten what I was reading, and have to go back over it again. I love to read, though, and will read almost anything—except science fiction (although I love the sci fi channel and the movies with the abnormal animals!)—but I catch myself finding errors and wondering what was meant. I would love to get paid to read and find errors. It would not be like work to me!
Along that line, I would like to comment about tests, syllabi, printed resources, and online class materials. I struggle to read this stuff! Are they not proofread? When there is an error, I have a hard time trying to figure out what I am supposed to do. When it is a test, I am afraid I will put down the wrong answer because I misunderstood the question. I think about it too much, and then can’t figure out what the question should say. I had to email one professor because in the middle of the assignment, punctuation was left out. Reading it one way meant I had to compare three or more characters out of different stories; reading it another way meant I could pick from one up to three characters to compare. This professor couldn’t understand my confusion. Needless to say, I was reading it the wrong way and my paper would have suffered. I’ve learned to just ask, and deal with people who just don’t understand why I get confused. If you write something that other people are going to read, please make sure to put all the words in there, in the order they should go in, without spelling them incorrectly, or repeating a word or two, and use correct punctuation to get your absolute meaning across.
My next thought about grammar has to do with the rules and regulations governing how we speak and write. Most of the grammar rules running around in my head get on my nerves. They don’t help me in what I am doing. Their purpose is to confuse me. Should you use “well” or “good” in a particular sentence? Should words like “a lot” or “already” be spelled together or apart? Why do we have to care if we can use a contraction like “it’s” or “I’m” or if we should spell it out for it to be correct in a formal paper? And then there are the professors. Some grade on just content; some go the whole nine yards with grammar issues. It always takes a test or paper or two to figure out what is expected. Why isn’t grammar the same for everybody? If one teacher doesn’t care about transitional words or phrases connecting my paper together, then why do you? (You being you in general, not you specifically.) If all my sentences start with “the”, why does that matter? What about “who” and “whom”? Isn’t “Whom are you talking to?” and “Who are you talking to?” basically the same thing? Everybody knows what I am asking and what I want to know. Grammar can be compared to “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”; figure out who you are talking to, and speak and write like they do. Everybody does it differently, and everybody expects different things. Even wordiness can come under fire with some professors. If you can say what you need to say in one sentence, do it. Conciseness counts. Then other professors have a strict limit on how long their assignments should be, and that’s how much they want—even if you have to put in a bunch of beating around the bush to increase the length of the paper. I prefer to just say what I want to say and go on. Now for that test we took the other day…
Do you like dissecting? I never did. Those poor frogs and pigs. I wonder who first thought to do that to them? I’ll have to google that. I love googling things! But, what is worse than dissecting an animal is dissecting a sentence. Who thought that would be fun and entertaining? The grammar test we took the other day blew my mind. And my advisor said I should take this class! I know the subject and predicate part of a sentence, but is there really such a thing as a participial phrase? All I thought of was a marsupial. I am positive animals with pouches do not have anything to do with grammar! I will have to use google again. I do not remember anything about direct and indirect objects from high school. It has been entirely too long. One example question from the test is “John was happy with the results, yet he, too, wanted to recheck the data.” What is the underlined word an example of—coordinating conjunction, subordinating conjunction, conjunctive adverb, adjective, or preposition? I knew it was a conjunction, but what does coordinating and subordinating mean again? After 50 questions, my mind was in a whirlwind. Once the professor explained the answer, it did make sense. “Yet” is a coordinating conjunction. It coordinates the two clauses. Both are complete sentences in their own right, but yet put them together. Other coordinating conjunctions are “and”, “for”, and “but”. Another test question was: In the sentence “Sitting in the hot sun all day is not my idea of a good time,” the underlined word is correctly classified as which of the following: participle, gerund, main verb, infinitive, or auxiliary verb. The only way I got this was because I vaguely remembered my son going over this in 8th grade English. ING makes it a gerund. But guess what? Not always! Grammar is so confusing. The very next question had “thinking” as the underlined word. You would think that would be a gerund, too, wouldn’t you? But, no. It isn’t. Because “sit” is only an action of being, it is a gerund, but since “think” is really an action, it is a participle. Is that really supposed to make sense? Who made up these rules? I will have to google that, as well, I suppose.
Finally, now to contradict what I said before. Remember when I said when you write something that others are going to read, make sure you write what you mean to? Another frustrating issue with grammar is that your mind knows what you meant, and you can’t edit your own work. Your mind will see what you should have written, and if you go back over it and reread it, you could still have errors there that you missed. Why does grammar, and your mind, work that way? Another reason for me to use google! I have no idea. But, if grammar was the same for everyone, if everyone followed the same rules and regulations, your mind could probably follow along and everything would be ok. But, since it isn’t, your mind doesn’t work that way either. So, if you find any errors in this, or future blogs, I apologize now. Be convinced, I reread this blog several times before posting, but errors find a way of being published. They are sneaky little devils! So, with the publication of this first grammar blog, I am looking forward to this class and being able to decipher direct and indirect objects, and knowing whether past perfect progressives actually exist or not. It seems I remember more from Spanish than English about sentence structure, so we will see how it goes. I was very excited to sign up for this class, and to actually get in—and if by the end of the semester, I can dissect a sentence with the best of them, I will feel like I have accomplished a huge goal! Let’s learn all we can about prescriptive and descriptive rules, and apply them to all aspects of our speaking and writing obligations!
This is a blog that has been assigned in my English class. If after reading this blog you feel the need to leave comments, please do so. I would love to hear your thoughts as well.
Until I started this class, I never really thought about grammar. I can speak, write, and read well enough, but hearing this professor talk about grammar has made me realize there is more to grammar than what I originally surmised. This blog will be discussing “What is it about grammar that gets on your nerves??!!” Up until we took the huge grammar test the other day, I would have said very little about grammar gets on my nerves; now, I have a long list of things!
My first thought about grammar that gets on my nerves is trying to read something someone else has written that has errors in it. I don’t look for these errors; they just jump out at me. Reading news alerts, emails—or even books—can be very aggravating for me. Most of these don’t have spelling errors in them; several are just the wrong use of a word, or words in the wrong order. Even punctuation—or lack thereof—can catch my attention and derail my train of thought on what I am reading. Most of the errors cannot be caught by spell check because they are a word—they are just not the right word. Some examples are “I was they’re, too. “ This is the wrong one—it’s the contraction for they are. The correct word would be there. Another example is “I want to go to the go to beach.” I know what you mean, but there are too many words in the sentence to make it correct. Also, leaving words out doesn’t help me either. I spend time trying to figure out what you meant—or what word should go there—and then I have forgotten what I was reading, and have to go back over it again. I love to read, though, and will read almost anything—except science fiction (although I love the sci fi channel and the movies with the abnormal animals!)—but I catch myself finding errors and wondering what was meant. I would love to get paid to read and find errors. It would not be like work to me!
Along that line, I would like to comment about tests, syllabi, printed resources, and online class materials. I struggle to read this stuff! Are they not proofread? When there is an error, I have a hard time trying to figure out what I am supposed to do. When it is a test, I am afraid I will put down the wrong answer because I misunderstood the question. I think about it too much, and then can’t figure out what the question should say. I had to email one professor because in the middle of the assignment, punctuation was left out. Reading it one way meant I had to compare three or more characters out of different stories; reading it another way meant I could pick from one up to three characters to compare. This professor couldn’t understand my confusion. Needless to say, I was reading it the wrong way and my paper would have suffered. I’ve learned to just ask, and deal with people who just don’t understand why I get confused. If you write something that other people are going to read, please make sure to put all the words in there, in the order they should go in, without spelling them incorrectly, or repeating a word or two, and use correct punctuation to get your absolute meaning across.
My next thought about grammar has to do with the rules and regulations governing how we speak and write. Most of the grammar rules running around in my head get on my nerves. They don’t help me in what I am doing. Their purpose is to confuse me. Should you use “well” or “good” in a particular sentence? Should words like “a lot” or “already” be spelled together or apart? Why do we have to care if we can use a contraction like “it’s” or “I’m” or if we should spell it out for it to be correct in a formal paper? And then there are the professors. Some grade on just content; some go the whole nine yards with grammar issues. It always takes a test or paper or two to figure out what is expected. Why isn’t grammar the same for everybody? If one teacher doesn’t care about transitional words or phrases connecting my paper together, then why do you? (You being you in general, not you specifically.) If all my sentences start with “the”, why does that matter? What about “who” and “whom”? Isn’t “Whom are you talking to?” and “Who are you talking to?” basically the same thing? Everybody knows what I am asking and what I want to know. Grammar can be compared to “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”; figure out who you are talking to, and speak and write like they do. Everybody does it differently, and everybody expects different things. Even wordiness can come under fire with some professors. If you can say what you need to say in one sentence, do it. Conciseness counts. Then other professors have a strict limit on how long their assignments should be, and that’s how much they want—even if you have to put in a bunch of beating around the bush to increase the length of the paper. I prefer to just say what I want to say and go on. Now for that test we took the other day…
Do you like dissecting? I never did. Those poor frogs and pigs. I wonder who first thought to do that to them? I’ll have to google that. I love googling things! But, what is worse than dissecting an animal is dissecting a sentence. Who thought that would be fun and entertaining? The grammar test we took the other day blew my mind. And my advisor said I should take this class! I know the subject and predicate part of a sentence, but is there really such a thing as a participial phrase? All I thought of was a marsupial. I am positive animals with pouches do not have anything to do with grammar! I will have to use google again. I do not remember anything about direct and indirect objects from high school. It has been entirely too long. One example question from the test is “John was happy with the results, yet he, too, wanted to recheck the data.” What is the underlined word an example of—coordinating conjunction, subordinating conjunction, conjunctive adverb, adjective, or preposition? I knew it was a conjunction, but what does coordinating and subordinating mean again? After 50 questions, my mind was in a whirlwind. Once the professor explained the answer, it did make sense. “Yet” is a coordinating conjunction. It coordinates the two clauses. Both are complete sentences in their own right, but yet put them together. Other coordinating conjunctions are “and”, “for”, and “but”. Another test question was: In the sentence “Sitting in the hot sun all day is not my idea of a good time,” the underlined word is correctly classified as which of the following: participle, gerund, main verb, infinitive, or auxiliary verb. The only way I got this was because I vaguely remembered my son going over this in 8th grade English. ING makes it a gerund. But guess what? Not always! Grammar is so confusing. The very next question had “thinking” as the underlined word. You would think that would be a gerund, too, wouldn’t you? But, no. It isn’t. Because “sit” is only an action of being, it is a gerund, but since “think” is really an action, it is a participle. Is that really supposed to make sense? Who made up these rules? I will have to google that, as well, I suppose.
Finally, now to contradict what I said before. Remember when I said when you write something that others are going to read, make sure you write what you mean to? Another frustrating issue with grammar is that your mind knows what you meant, and you can’t edit your own work. Your mind will see what you should have written, and if you go back over it and reread it, you could still have errors there that you missed. Why does grammar, and your mind, work that way? Another reason for me to use google! I have no idea. But, if grammar was the same for everyone, if everyone followed the same rules and regulations, your mind could probably follow along and everything would be ok. But, since it isn’t, your mind doesn’t work that way either. So, if you find any errors in this, or future blogs, I apologize now. Be convinced, I reread this blog several times before posting, but errors find a way of being published. They are sneaky little devils! So, with the publication of this first grammar blog, I am looking forward to this class and being able to decipher direct and indirect objects, and knowing whether past perfect progressives actually exist or not. It seems I remember more from Spanish than English about sentence structure, so we will see how it goes. I was very excited to sign up for this class, and to actually get in—and if by the end of the semester, I can dissect a sentence with the best of them, I will feel like I have accomplished a huge goal! Let’s learn all we can about prescriptive and descriptive rules, and apply them to all aspects of our speaking and writing obligations!
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