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May. 31st, 2011 10:58 amNews of the day: I have a gorgeous new American great-niece. When my mother asked my nephew (the baby's uncle) about her weight, J said "She's too young to worry."
May. 31st, 2011
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May. 31st, 2011 10:44 pmTomorrow I'm teaching alliteration and light. I haven't done my homework on what the quantum physics book says next about light, so I have absolutely no idea what approach I'm going to take. Except... I was going to use Beowulf and perhaps some Middle English poetry. I was thinking, of course, of the Dream of the Rood. My class would have loved it, but it would be bad, bad teaching. We'd digress for the full class into the stuff of linguistics and my science enthusiasts would be not exactly happy. I have a selection of modern poetry that will do. It's not the Dream of the Rood, however, which is a vast sorrow.
Also, I have to decide if tomorrow is the day to talk about the conditional, or if I want to talk about sentence parts or maybe something else.
They want grammar, my class, but they want everything at once, in a kind of instant infusion. They're willing to put the work in, but it's slow going and I want to leave them with an understanding of how English operates rather than with a detailed list of terminology. One student counted (last week) how often I explained that being able to conjugate 20 pages of verbs did not actually mean that one can use those verbs properly. I guess I have a thing about tables of conjugation used as a prop instead of actually learning to use a language. Also, two of my students wanted to be able to create tables. I think we were all surprised when I turned obdurate.
My class wants to write beautifully - that's its main aim - not to produce perfect grammarians. This means they're going to learn how to manipulate verb forms in contexts, possibly in contexts that incorporate the dead bodies of a couple of natural grammarians. I think I'll leave the battle for another week and look at nouns, then adjectives, then adverbs and so on. When we have an overview and can understand how sentences work, then I can return to verbs*.
*Don't you think this is a fine excuse for cowardice?
Also, I have to decide if tomorrow is the day to talk about the conditional, or if I want to talk about sentence parts or maybe something else.
They want grammar, my class, but they want everything at once, in a kind of instant infusion. They're willing to put the work in, but it's slow going and I want to leave them with an understanding of how English operates rather than with a detailed list of terminology. One student counted (last week) how often I explained that being able to conjugate 20 pages of verbs did not actually mean that one can use those verbs properly. I guess I have a thing about tables of conjugation used as a prop instead of actually learning to use a language. Also, two of my students wanted to be able to create tables. I think we were all surprised when I turned obdurate.
My class wants to write beautifully - that's its main aim - not to produce perfect grammarians. This means they're going to learn how to manipulate verb forms in contexts, possibly in contexts that incorporate the dead bodies of a couple of natural grammarians. I think I'll leave the battle for another week and look at nouns, then adjectives, then adverbs and so on. When we have an overview and can understand how sentences work, then I can return to verbs*.
*Don't you think this is a fine excuse for cowardice?