Schoolhouse Rock HAS A FUNCTION

Having only being in class for one of the two days, I thought I wouldn’t have enough to write about on my blog. I was wrong. Just from Thursdays class, I got so much information packed into my brain, it’s unreal. I feel like we have gotten into some serious grammar that I need to spend time with to figure out.

Most importantly, I learned that I forgot how great Schoolhouse Rock is. I used to watch it when I was younger. It is still exactly the same to me. What better way to learn about verbs than with a superhero? English teachers can tell us a lot about conjunctions; Trains and their conductors that sing are more entertaining. Who knew? I enjoyed that aspect of class.

I learned all about the most common errors that English teachers will find throughout their students work. I learned that a comma splice is a sentence, then a comma, followed by another sentence. An example would be: I went to the mall, Jon came to the mall with me. I also learned that a run on sentence is not just a long sentence. It is two sentences connected together with no form of punctuation in between them. An example of that would be: My cat is really tired my cat wants to go eat food. Run on sentences and comma splices are two common errors that I should expect to see in my future.

A way to get around run on sentences and comma splices is with the usage of a coordinating conjunction. They are: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. These words can be placed in the middle of the two sentences to create fluency and appropriate grammar.

I am still confused about a few things. Since I wasn’t there on Tuesday, I still don’t have the transitive, intransitive, linking verb situation down. I know that intransitive verbs stand by themselves and transitive verbs require direct objects. Linking verbs link a subject with a description of the subject. But it is still hard for me to figure out which one is which by looking at a sentence. Maybe I just need to spend some more time looking at sentences to figure it out but I am thinking that maybe there is a trick that I am unaware of that helps to decipher which verb type it is.

My question this week is: Are there any tips or tricks that anyone uses to figure out which type of verb it is? Or do I just need to spend a little more time working with sentences to become better at this… 

Subject, verb, prep phrase, object, adjectives... :(

Throughout this week’s classes, I learned a lot about sentence structure. BEACUASE I have no prior knowledge of proper grammar, it was a little difficult for me to pick apart sentences and show what each word meant. There was the subject and verb, pretty easy at first. BUT once adverbs and adjectives, along with prepositional phrases were thrown into the mix, I was seemingly caught off guard.

After going through different newspapers and taking apart the headlines throughout the pages, it started making more sense to me. I was seeing what parts of speech were placed and why they were placed in their specific locations. I feel that I have more of a grasp on the concepts after going through them again. Being an English major, I feel like I should know all of this like the back of my hand, but in actuality, I do not. I hope that through this class, I can make more sense of these concepts and utilize them throughout my life, as well as, my classroom.

In order to be able to teach this, I am going to need to know way more. I learned this week that I have a long way to go in terms of grammar in order to be confident in what I am teaching. Confidence is really important in the classroom and grammar is probably the place in which I am the least confident. I learned this week that it will take lots of practice for me to get to where I need to be in terms of grammar.

My question this week is: How would I go about teaching grammar in a way that is easy for students to learn and also fun for them to learn? I have problems learning when concepts aren’t presented in an interesting way. How do I translate this to grammar and make fun, interesting lessons that help students actually learn the material?

Apostrophe me

So far in this class, I have learned a lot in terms of grammar and punctuation. Although we have not had many classes, I feel that I have acquired a few skills already. The main thing that I have learned is related to the "house style" section in our living grammar scrapbook. I had no clue that each publication had so much wiggle room when it comes to grammar. THINGS LIKE NUMBERS, APOSTROPHES, NAMES. I was unaware that various magazines and newspapers could create their own rules. Sometimes, it's hard to even find what the rule is. For example, in Cosmopolitan magazine, they write out numbers and spell out numbers seemingly equally. It was virtually impossible for me to find out what that rule was.

I have also learned a lot dealing with apostrophes. We spent a whole class looking at these little marks and I was interested to find that I used some apostrophes wrong. I have always had trouble using an apostrophe when the word ended in an 's'. Names were especially hard for me. 

Sentences such as:

Chris's ball bounced across the road.

Or is it:

Chris' ball bounced across the road.

The new style of apostrophe rules says that it would be the second version. But is that always the case? Is there no 's' after the apostrophe for anyone's name that ends with an 's'. That is still confusing to me. Other dealings with apostrophes are easier for me to emulate. I feel pretty confident in using the apostrophe with contractions like it's, who's, they're and you're. That has always come naturally to me. I haven't even thought of using apostrophes for letters, numbers, and abbreviations. I had always just stuck one in where it looked good, but now I know that there are real rules regarding this topic. 

Overall, I have learned that grammar and punctuation are far more important than I thought they were. I have never really paid any attention to my grammar and punctuation and I have never really been criticized for the ways in which I used them. Now I see that grammar and punctuation can change the way a word sounds or even how a sentence reads. It is a vital tool that I used to take for granted. In the exercise where we looked at the Dear John letter, I was shocked to see that changing the punctuation of the sentence can change the whole meaning from a love letter to a break-up letter. From now on, I will pay attention to the ways I use my grammar and the way I convey my thoughts to my audiences.

My final question for this blog was said earlier. But I will include it at the end as well. I want to know if there is always an apostrophe without an 's' after names that end with an 's' such as James.

I Need a 12-step Program

After reading the first few lines in the requirements for this first blog posting, it became clear to me that I had no clue what I was going to write about. "What grammatical and mechanical issues do you, as a writer, need to focus on this semester?" Uh-oh. Being as this is my first grammar class, I clearly have many things that would be in my favor to improve upon. I don’t know any rules, regulations, or tricks about grammar. All I know was taught to me in elementary school. Her name was Mrs. Hafford and she made me cry when she told me that sparkle pencils weren’t real and I needed to get some yellow ones like everyone else who could follow directions. Not exactly the greatest experience, but I guess I learned a few things. Since then, I have just kind of added my own flair into my grammar. I threw in a few dashes, some semi-colons, and lots of commas. Lots of commas, understatement of the year.

All of this thought leads me to one conclusion. I am not perfect. Saying that is a little difficult and tough on my ego, but it must be annunciated. Not. Perfect. I build myself up into this great writer who has been perfecting my skill from a young age. But that’s obviously wrong. I need to admit what I am here to say. I am Rachel Raine and I am a comma-a-holic. I use them all day, every day. Any sentence that is longer than a few words could use a comma, or at least I think it should. I think they add a nice pause, can add emphasis, and can be used to communicate different meanings. What I am really doing, with all this comma usage, is pretending that other forms of grammatical tools don’t exist. I never trade a comma for a semi-colon, or maybe even break up a sentence. All of this comma usage turns my writing into some sort of unbearable monster. Something that is so long-winded, that it is hard to read aloud. Reading something that I wrote takes talent and some good lungs.

I opened the first word document I saw of my writing and I found this. There are merely four sentences in this ‘chunk’ of writing. Within these four sentences, I counted nine commas. I am sure this isn’t even my worst. It was just the first thing I found.

Clearly, a lack of self esteem, stemming from childhood, is taking place. According to Dr. Susan Boodman, for the most part these days, girls tend to be both obsessed and dissatisfied with their looks, are too young and shortsighted to understand the implications of surgery, particularly the risks that implants may pose and the long-term maintenance they require (8). Girls choose to go under the knife at a young age, not understanding the intensity of their actions. When a body is in its stage of adolescence and young adulthood, it is not ready to be altered.

 So I guess that would be my greatest grammatical issue that I need to focus on. Letting the commas run free and adding a few more tools into my writing. Maybe if I relinquish my addiction to these life-constricting marks, I would be able to write more fluently, more perfectly. Perfect is something I would love to accomplish, even though I know a perfect writer doesn’t exist. At this point, I would settle for a cure to my comma addiction.