\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0“Hey, hey, anybody listening? Hey, hey, anybody there? Hey, hey, anybody listening? Anybody care?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That song, which we often sing in Sunday school, means more to me in light of recollections of my acquisition of the English language, when I was a child.<\/p>\n
One of the most stifling memories I have about childhood \u00e2\u20ac\u201d wrought largely by the influence of siblings and schoolmates \u00e2\u20ac\u201d deals with the pronouncement, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get excited.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Some admonished me not to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153go ape,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and others even added another word to enhance the ape-ness motif.<\/p>\n
Thinking about how people express themselves in speech and writing, I wondered about the multitudes who simply ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the big deal?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mispelled, but you can still read it, can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly the point. I keep wondering whether those in my life who have said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get excited!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are right. After all, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mere language. With a modest sense of language and an appreciation for how it conveys meaning, I used to wonder why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get stares and glares in fifth grade at Immaculate Conception School.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once I asked Sister Mary Kranken Zimmer, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If the past tense of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdrive\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdrove,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 why isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcarrove\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the past tense of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcarrive\u00e2\u20ac\u2122?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
So she remound (find, found \/ remind, remound) me of a pile of erasers that I should volunteer to pound out after school. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been blound to my protestations that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d asked an innocent question.<\/p>\n
Many people have said I make too big a deal of language, and that I should ignore, among other things, the East Las Vegas Schools message board that advertises an exciting match in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153boys scooer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (not to be confused with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153soccer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153soccer mom,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in Sara Palin, sort of).<\/p>\n
We must also ignore the traffic sign on the 200 block of Grand, where the road narrows, that reads, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No parking begin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
To what language does that sign apply? We all realize that in certain contexts in German, one has to wait until the very end of the sentence to learn the meaning. We must wait for the verb, even if it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear until the middle of Act I of Wagner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Flying Dutchman.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Almost 40 years ago I pored over a set of English compositions for the first time. Back then, we teachers tried to find ways to get our students to distinguish between \u00e2\u20ac\u0153infer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153imply.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We agonized over the repetition of the same errors, as in the there\/their\/they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re syndrome, or the who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\/whose problems. And we anguished over our failure to teach students that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a lot\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is two words, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alright\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not all right, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153already\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is.<\/p>\n
My guess is that there are less (or is it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fewer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?) than 100 abuses of the language and that if we spent enough time correcting them, our students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 children would eventually help their schools make Adequate Yearly Progress, part of the asinine No Child Left Behind act.<\/p>\n
In the classroom for four decades, I wondered whether all the errors that upset me in the past may have been corrected and a set of new ones introduced.<\/p>\n
I spoke to Robyn Rose, an extremely enthusiastic graduate assistant who has taught a number of English, grammar and composition courses at Highlands.<\/p>\n
And what has changed for Robyn?<\/p>\n
Apparently not much. She said her students still struggle with the usual linguistic suspects such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whose,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as well \u00c2\u00a0as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153its.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One difference, Robyn notes, is the influence cell phone text messaging has had on academic writing.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Students misspell a lot of words in academic writing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, adding that they omit most vowels when they send cell messages to one another, and those omissions show up in students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 hand-written or typed assignments.<\/p>\n
And Robyn pointed out that she has better luck when she requires that students apply grammar rules rather than merely recite them. I mentioned a former colleague who would spend the first eight weeks of class pounding out every conceivable grammar rule, such as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The object of the preposition is always in the objective case.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Whatever that means.<\/p>\n
Then, usually in the ninth week, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d turn the students loose to write their term papers. And she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d wonder why her students failed to become instant Hemingways.<\/p>\n
Have we been imparting information in the same way it was presented to us?<\/p>\n
Do we need to know the difference between a gerund and a participle in order to write well? What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with simply allowing students to write without first having memorized correlative conjunctions and adverb clauses?<\/p>\n
If people can write correctly, it shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter what their grammar skills are. And as for admonitions from friends and relatives when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d appear to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153go ape\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over language solecisms, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t intend to change.<\/p>\n
I care about language, and it is a big deal.<\/p>\n
But here, to borrow an idea fr om the local traffic sign designers, I must say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No more writing begin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0“Hey, hey, anybody listening? Hey, hey, anybody there? Hey, hey, anybody listening? Anybody care?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That song, which we often sing in Sunday school, means more to me in light of recollections of my acquisition of the English language, when I was a child. One of the most stifling memories I have about childhood \u00e2\u20ac\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}