Pardon My Panic

[Beest]

Originally Posted by Juniper

, inductive logic,

Does this involve wrapping a coil of wire round your head and ramping up the juice, at that point pretty much anything makes sense.

if it doesn't it should, there's some interesting work on the effects of large magentic fields on the frontal lobe [Citation needed]

[Trilby]

Juni, don't get all hung up on grades. Honor classes SUCK and you have to do community leadership bullshit (basically, you are an unpaid slave ) which is next to impossible with all the other things you've got going on. I thought things were going to be nothing but all breezy A's...then I took Logic and a grad course - yikes. Things eventually get a bit harder!

[Pie]

Originally Posted by Juniper

We had a "diagnostic quiz" on grammar in a lit class on Monday. Now, keep in mind, I am a writer. I mean, I write for a living. People pay me to write. I got 54% on this quiz.

Boy, do I feel dumb.

Just means you don't do it the way the Professor thinks you should do it. He/She will take the rest of the semester to tell you how he/she thinks it should be done; you ace the final and go back to doing it your way.

[Aliantha]

Don't stress too much about the grammar quiz mate. Who needs grammar anyway???

I'm 9/10th of the way towards having a degree in English and English as a Second Language and I still fuck up those things.

When it all comes down to it, as english speakers we take for granted the inate understanding we have of our language as professional people and when someone asks us to explain the rules we follow, sometimes that's a bit tough. Just get yourself a handbook and go through it. I'm sure it'll bring great clarity and you'll breeze through the next one.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Don't stress too much about the grammar quiz mate. Who needs grammar anyway???

grampa, of course.

[Juniper]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Don't stress too much about the grammar quiz mate. Who needs grammar anyway???

I'm 9/10th of the way towards having a degree in English and English as a Second Language and I still fuck up those things.

When it all comes down to it, as english speakers we take for granted the inate understanding we have of our language as professional people and when someone asks us to explain the rules we follow, sometimes that's a bit tough. Just get yourself a handbook and go through it. I'm sure it'll bring great clarity and you'll breeze through the next one.

Yeah, the thing is, I am good at USING grammar. Always have been. I very, very rarely make a mistake unless it's in a casual usage like a discussion board post, and even then it's more a matter of not bothering to be English Teacher Precise...on purpose. Things like sentence fragments. Or starting a sentence with Or or And, ending on a preposition. Saying "them" instead of "him or her." But I generally do it right when it counts.

I'm not a grammar nut, but I do believe you have to know how to do it right before you break the rules on purpose. Professional writers DO break the rules on purpose, for effect. The difference is, in that case, it does have a good effect instead of just making us look ignorant. At least that's the general goal!

Problem is, I can't CITE the rules. If you give me a sentence to correct, I don't know how to explain what's wrong with it, I just know how to fix it. Well, usually. Apparently I missed a few of those, too.

I never learned this stuff. You know back in grade school when all the kids in Sister Mary Eleanor's class were being drilled in diagramming sentences, memorizing rules about comma splices, split infinitives, dangling modifiers and transitive verbs? I had already passed the writing test and sat in the corner with my nose in a Judy Blume book.

But I am working on an English degree with a concentration in professional writing, which means that soon I will have to take an editing course, and I will have to learn all of those grammar rules, proofreading marks and citations. So it is important, just frustrating.

And like Pie said, it's a matter of doing things HIS way. I happen to have a deep and abiding love of the semicolon; my teacher told us to avoid them like the plague. I like em dashes too -- wonder how he feels about those?

Oh well.

[monster]

You can't teach your grammar to suck eggs

....but you can insure it suck's nuts

[DanaC]

Wow. I could have written most of that. lol. Look, I taught adult literacy for two years and did a literacy support course that was basically a level 3 language course (stage before degree). It's hard. I found the technical explanations very, very difficult. I still would find it hard to explain why a sentence was right or wrong, but I rarely make errors in papers that are important, unless it's a deliberate creative act. I understand most of the important rules. More than many people. But at an instinctive level. I don't have an expert's understanding.

I am a bit pigheaded on writing. I don't do it how we're told/advised to do it. I probably should. But I don't.

[eta] I also got ticked off for using too many semi-colons *grins* by my literacy support tutor. She was probably right.

[Trilby]

Dashes? I LOVE using dashes. It makes me feel all Dickinson-onian.