Gold Mine Gutted

In the Bright Eyes song "Gold Mine Gutted," they use a variety of very descriptive and figurative language. In "The Everyday Writer," 39d its offered that, "Figurative language, or figures of speech, paints pictures in readers minds, allowing readers to "see" a point readily and clearly. Far from being a frill, such language is crucial to understanding."Lines like "hooded sweatshirt walk," is a figure of speech that implies a condition and gives insight into what the walk was like and what was happening (as one reads the following lines.) Figurative language does help the reader or listener paint an image of whats going on and really helps create meaning.

It was Don Delillo, whiskey, me
And a blinking midnight clock
Speakers on a tv stand
Just a turntable to watch
And the smoke came out our mouths
On all those hooded sweatshirt walks
We were a stroke of luck
We were a goldmine and they gutted us

And from the sidelines
You see me run
Until I'm out of breath
Living the good life
I left for dead
The sorrowful midwest
Well, I did my best
To keep my head

It was grass stained jeans and incompletes
And a girl from class to touch
But you think about yourself too much
And you ruin who you love
Well, all these claims at consciousness
My stray dog freedom
Let's have a nice clean cut
Like a bag we buy and divvy up

And from the sidelines
I see you run
Until you're out of breath.
And all those white lines that sped us up
We hurry to our death
Well, I lagged behind
So you got ahead

Metaphor In Songs

Diana Hacker talks about metaphors in her book, A Writers Reference. She says in a metaphor the like or as is omitted and implied . . . and a mixed metaphor is when two or more images are paired that don't necessarily make sense. Songwriters use this method of phrasing lyrics all the time to create images and tell a story. In the case of the song, "Big Black Car," by Gregory Alan Isakov, he writes images which essentially juxtaposition of himself to a beautiful girl.We get phrases like, "you were a dancer, I was a rag," taking a traditionally beautiful image and comparing it with something that we consider dirty. He uses traditional metaphor as well saying things like, "hope was a letter."

you were a phonograph, i was a kid
i sat with an ear close, just listening
i was there when the rain tapped her way down you face
you were a miracle…i was just holdin your space
well time has a way of throwing it all in your face
the past, she is haunted, the future is laced
heartbreak, ya know, drives a big black car
swear i was in the back seat, just minding my own
and through the glass, the corn crows come like rain
they won’t stay, they won’t stay
for too long now
this could be all that we know..
of love and all.
well you were a dancer, i was a rag
the song in my head, well was all that i had
hope was a letter i never could send
love was a country we couldn’t defend.
and through the carnival we watch them go round and round
all we knew of home was just a sunset and some clowns
well you were a magazine, i was a plane Jane
just walking the sidewalks all covered in rain
love to just get into one of your stories
just me and all of my plane Jane glory

Reversing the Structure

Diana Hacker, in A Writers Reference, talks about the idea of simplified structure within an authors writing: The rule states, RuleW2-d if the structure of a sentence is needlessly indirect, try simplifying it, look for opportunities to structure the verb. Today in class I was thinking about the idea of comparing sentences and I thought about how musicians take what could be complex sentences and make them concise ultimately conveying a stronger meaning and/or connection with their audience. So, for this blog instead of making the structure of phrases in songs more simplified I thought I would work the other way to show what the sentences might have looked like with a more literal meaning and why the simplified meaning makes more sense. The song I choose to do is by Elliot Smith and its called Waltz #2, I am only going to do the first stanza of the song, but I am sure you'll get the idea.

The Original

first the mic then a half cigarette
singing Cathy's clown
that's the man she's married to now
that's the girl that he takes around town
she appears composed, so she is, I suppose
who can really tell
she shows no emotion at all
stares into space like a dead china doll

My Complicated Rewrite

I step up to the microphone and then I sing a song, followed by the lighting of my nicotine-induced need for an artificial stick of paper made of chemicals and tobacco.

At the microphone on the stage I sing a song originally written by The Everly Brothers.

Later on I see a past lover with the man she is wed to now. My ex-lover is on his arm appearing composed, and I guess she is, but no one can tell; she appears depressed, scatterbrained.

 There is nothing wrong with either writings, but if you listen to the song, the small and short phrases Elliot Smith uses let the listener draw their own conclusions and assumptions, ultimately making the words more powerful.

                                                                                   The Rest of the Lyrics

I'm never gonna know you now
but I'm gonna love you anyhow

now she's done and they're calling someone
such a familiar name
I'm so glad that my memories remote
'cause I'm doing just fine hour to hour, note to note
here it is the revenge to the tune
you're no good
you're no good, you're no good, you're no good
can't you tell that it's well understood

I'm never gonna know you now
but I'm gonna love you anyhow

I'm here today and expected to stay on and on and on
I'm tired, I'm tired

looking out on the substitute scene
still going strong
XO, mom, it's ok, it's alright, nothing's wrong
tell Mr. Man with impossible plansto just leave me alone
in the place where I make no mistakes
in the place where I have what it takes

I'm never gonna know you now
but I'm gonna love you anyhow
I'm never gonna know you now
but I'm gonna love you anyhow
I'm never gonna know you now
but I'm gonna love you anyhow

 

Song To Woody

In keeping with the beautiful language motif, I was listening to the song "Song to Woody" by Bob Dylan. As I was listening I was reading the lyrics, I got to thinking about how Dylan used names in his song like Woody Guthrie, Cisco, Sonny and Leadbelly. Dylan is directly speaking to these guys and using their names in the song. I think that the song and its lyrics are just beautiful, but then I thought about what a statement of respect Dylan was probably offering to these men by including, not just alluding to their names. All the names are of musicians that probably meant something to Dylan and it's just so cool to see him using them in his song. The grammar rule that applies here is of course using proper nouns and capitalizing to show use. On English-club.com the rules is stated: We always use a Capital Letter for the first letter of a proper noun (name). This includes names of people, places, companies, days of the week and months. It's a pretty simple rule, but to me, using these names in the song signifies importance I think. We grow up hearing and using this rule, but something really struck me while I was reading the lyrics. The names are important to Dylan, and the capitalization almost alludes to them being important. Its an interesting point of respect for a song writer to do so.


I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walking a road other men have gone down
I'm seeing a new world of people and things
Hear paupers and peasants and princes and kings.

Hey hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song
About a funny old world that's coming along
Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn
It looks like it's dying and it's hardly been born.

Hey Woody Guthrie but I know that you know
All the things that I'm saying and a many times more
I'm singing you the song but I can't you sing enough
'Cause there's not many men that've done the things that you've done.

Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

I'm leaving tomorrow but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hitting some hard travelling too.

Anonanimal

So, in actually applying grammar usage rules to the beautiful language motif through music and everyday life that I have been on, I was listening to the song called, “Anonanimal” by Andrew Bird. I knew that the lyrics really were beautiful but I also realized that there was a sentence that had alliteration to it. Alliteration defined by Grammar-monster.com is defined as - Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial letter in successive words; it is done for effect. In the case of this song it not only improves a flow and rhythm, but it makes me really think about how Andrew bird can play with language and create such meaning with such random words. The constant repetition of the ‘A’ in this line, which appears throughout the whole song is a constant rhythm of thought. I don’t know exactly what I think about the line, but I know that it’s beautiful and makes sense within the context of the song.

 “Anomalous appendages Anon-animal Anon-animal” 

 I see a sea anemone
The enemy
See a sea anemone
And that'll be the end of me.

While the vicious fish was caught unawares in the tenderest of tendrils
Underneath her tender gills

I will become this animal
Perfectly adapted to the music halls
I will become this animal
Anomalous appendages
A non-animal

Hold on just a second
Don't tell me this one you know
I know this one I know this song
I know this one I love this song
Hold on just a second
Don't tell me this one you know
i know this one I know this song
I know this one I love this song
I know this one

Underneath the stalactites
The troglobites lost their sight
Uh oh

The seemingly innocuous plecostomus
though posthumus
They talk to us
They talk too much

See a sea anemone
The enemy
See a sea anemone
That'll be the end of me
Vicious fish was caught unawares
In the tend'rest tendrils
Underneath her tender gills and

I will become this animal
Perfectly adapted to a music hall
I will become this animal

Anomalous appendages
A non-animal

Pro. Project Proposal

I am not exactly sure how I want to tackle this project, but I do want to start with the question: Why do we teachers teach grammar and is it important to continue doing so? Through my years here at Fredonia, getting ready to be a professional teacher, it has really occurred to me that they way I learned grammar through my younger schooling, and the way grammar is sometimes taught today in schools, may not be the best way of approaching teaching grammar or grammar usage. In fact, it might not be important at all to stress grammar like some educators do. I have begun to believe that grammar usage isn’t what’s important while looking at a students writing but rather that what the student has to say is. So, as I begin my professional career I would like to gather opinions for and against this teaching grammar debate, and then perhaps suggest a new and innovative way to teach grammar in my own classroom some day by creating a lesson plan. I am going to start by interviewing several professors and teachers to begin this conversation and then I plan on consulting some more academic texts sources, which would offer more insight. After I get the information I need, I plan on writing a short mini lesson, which I would be able to use in my own classroom someday.

Upward Over The Mountian

Because I have been on an absolute emotional rollercoaster lately I have been listening to some kind of depressing music ha, but with that in mind, I came across a song I used to listen to all the time called “upwards over the mountain,” by Iron and Wine. In keeping with the motif of beautiful language in this blog, the lyrics come to mind from the song, “ So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten Sons are like birds, flying upward over the mountain,” “Mother don't worry, I killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed Mother don't worry, I've got some money I saved for the weekend Mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me? Mother remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body? The imagery in these lyrics is just beautiful, but then I think about what they really mean to me. As I dig through my bank of memories all I can think about is this song playing in the car as my mother drove me to college for the first time. I can see her now, crying listening to this song in the car. We were leaving Buffalo and it was a perfect sunset and I was leaving home to a place I’d never been starting basically a new life. The lyrics hit me. They are all about a boy trying to prove that he’ll be ok to his mom. Words and beautiful language speaks to us. We store sentences in our internal dictionaries and are reminded of the phrases, or lyrics in this case, as a sentiment of the moment. Forever I’ll be connected to this song and see my moms face each time I hear the song and remember the words.  

Beautiful Language

I have spent far too much time lately thinking about how much language and grammar usage is ridiculous, and I have been getting discouraged to even want to teach English, and then I realized something important. I love language. I want to teach to help kids first, but I really love English specifically because I love beautiful language. I am not talking about the academic pretentious language, which is implored by far too many people that I know, I am talking about the imagery and emotion that words can give. Because I have been so stressed out lately with the events of life, I of course turn to music and have been listening to a new album by the band Bon Iver. The music alone evokes such a strong emotion in me, but what really catches me is Bon Iver’s imagery in his lyrics. He, (Justin Vernon who is Bon Iver) writes songs about emotions that everyone has. The lyrics are simple and beautiful and true, just like poetry I want to teach someday. And, as I got listening to the songs it hit me that the emotions being sung about were emotions of anguish and pain. Some of the songs spread a general felicity but the songs about deep and sad emotions affected me the most.  There was a lyric, “I was not magnificent.” The lyric with the music was so powerful.  But the words on their own, for whatever reason really hit me. They are so almost morbidly beautiful. I got thinking about a certain correlation with beautifulness relating to inner emotions and language as a means for snapshoting said emotion. In another song he sings, “Pincher with the skin inside. You pinned me with your black sphere eyes. You know that all the ropes sometimes. I was only for to die beside.” Why do these images and emotions hit so hard? I think there is a definite correlation between our own emotions, the music we listen to, and how we process emotion. In essence scenes that we connect with are scenes that we can’t articulate ourselves. I am not depressed or anything, I just enjoy a darker side of emotion with a beautiful tone through beautiful images. I find Bon Iver’s music appealing because his language tells a story and makes me consider my own life and my own emotions - Something I want my students to do someday.

Short Paper Draft #2

Frank DiMaria

Short Paper Grammar

                                          “Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season”

According to Shiv Raj Desai and Marsh Tyson, spoken word poetry is “a form of poetry that utilizes the strengths of our communities: oral tradition, call-and-response, home languages, storytelling and resistance. Spoken word poetry is usually performed for an audience and must be heard.” I think of poets like Saul Williams, or rapper Common, who implore such techniques through their art. Lines like, “We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue/Statements, such as, “keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically/or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active/and not representative of the individually determined is,” can be heard in Saul Williams’ Coded Language. The lines tell a story and are barbaric yelps crying out for a place to be heard. Williams demonstrates the African American English language and implores a code switching technique to reach a level of comfortableness in expressing feeling. If I showed my students Williams’ poetry and had them write their own to present, I would not only be embracing who my students are, creating a student centered environment, but I would be also teaching them that there is a place for them to be whom they are and what they want to be.

What does this look like in a classroom? Well, first off I would show my students some videos of spoken word poets performing to help my students start seeing what spoken word actually looks like. I would want my students to see the emotion and language that the poets are using as a model for my students to start writing their own poetry. Then I could start out my lesson/writing workshop with a simple question to my class - “what do you all wonder?” I want my students to look at the world and ask questions and figure out essentially why things are they way they are in the world. Students could come up with a list of questions that they have about the world like, “why do good things come to those who wait,” or “why must people die,” or “what will I do when I am older.” Letting students generate these kinds of questions serves as a good prompt for writing poetry. I have always found that writing poetry is a response to my own personal questions about the world and it might be a way for my students to do the same. I would have my students initially answer the questions they came up with in as many ways as possible then have them turn those answers into spoken word poetry. I would encourage my students to put expressive language into their poetry - words that really “come off” the page, writing to convey meaning. I would strongly encourage my students to also use whatever dialect/language they deem appropriate and comfortable. This is not to say I would say, “use Ebonics only.” I would simply encourage a level of comfortably. If it’s Spanish English or Ebonics/African American English is fine by me. What I care about is that my students are learning to play with language and learn to articulate their own ideas, feelings, and memories.  Another prompt I could use is to ask my students to think about an experience, either really good or really bad, and start writing down all the emotions that they can remember they had during the experience. Then write down various instances or scenes they can remember from the experience and weave in emotions while describing the experience. Through editing and rewriting, students will be able to produce a powerful poem about a personal memory that they had.

            After students wrote their poetry I would have them perform their poems, as after all, spoken word is a form of poetry that needs to come alive through performance. I could set up my classroom like a theater and have my students recite their poems over songs or movies in the background and create a true poets café atmosphere in the room. Students could explain their poem after they read it to give insight to their thinking process and take ownership for their work.

If students opened up through this method, “this proves to be an opportunity to understand the context in which our students are coming from. Once we can familiarize ourselves with the struggles our students grapple with internally, both in and outside of school, we can connect with them on a more human, personal level. More importantly, by simply listening to our students and creating a space where they can begin to articulate their thoughts and ideas in written and spoken form, we can further assist them in developing a love for written and spoken word.” My goal as a teacher must, and will be to truly listen to my students. Spoken word poetry not only allows students to write, speak, and perform in a comfortable way, it also allows me, the educator, to understand a different culture, a different language, and who my students are and can be inside and out of the classroom.

Desai, Shiv Raj, and Tyson Marsh. "Weaving Multiple Dialects in the Classroom Discourse: Poetry and Spoken Word as a Critical Teaching Tool." Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 9.2 (2005): 71-90. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 13 Sept. 2011.

Continuation of Agravation

So, after editing my girlfriend’s paper, she said to me, “did you edit it like a crazy English teacher?” I said I edited it and inquired why she wanted me to be so thorough with checking for grammar mistakes. She told me that he teacher deducts a half letter grade for each mistake. I was appalled to hear this, even being the sometimes-crazy English teacher I am. But I am not a “crazy English teacher” about grammar usage and I never will be. I am a crazy English teaching with stressing the importance of emotion and feeling within the classroom. I have talked about this idea in other blogs, but now that I am in this Grammar for Everyone class, I am becoming more and more aware of how much crap it really is to care so much about something that shouldn’t take precedence in the classroom. My girlfriend’s teacher probably had a strict teacher previously and is now taking it out on his students. Students don’t need to learn grammar rules. Students need to learn how to know that they matter and that their opinion counts.

Short Paper 1st draft

Frank DiMaria

Grammar For Everyone

                         “Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season”

As I begin my professional career as a teacher, I contemplate all the facets of what it actually means to be a teacher in a classroom. While a wide variety of ideas jump into my mind immediately, the one that sticks out the most is making a connection with my students and forming relationships with them - showing them I care. With this in mind, first things first, I need to be able to communicate with my students, and not only communicate with them but understand their “home language.”

I’ll confront the reality head on in saying I come from a predominantly white, upper middle class suburban center. The idea of bilingual education, or even hearing Ebonics in the classroom was not on my mind at all starting off as a teacher. But, now as I move along in my career, I am interested and aware of the discussions in education revolving these terms, and the dire need for me as a future teacher in New York, a multicultural epicenter, to embrace and incorporate my students home language in my own classroom. In The Skin We Speak, Judith Barker offers, “Home English or dialect, which most students learn at home, and recent immigrants often from peers, and which for first and second generation immigrants may be a combination of English and their mother tongue.” Essentially, a home language or dialect can best be understood as the language a person most feels comfortable using. For the sake of this conversation, I want to look at Ebonics or African American English, specifically to examine how some teachers feel about embracing it in a classroom and then address using spoken word poetry as a way of doing so.

Erin J. Quinn offers the insight that, “Many African American students, particularly those residing in large urban centers, are speakers of African American English (AAE), a linguistically rich, rule-governed variety of English that contributes in part to the cultural identity of individuals in the African American community.” In the New York City classroom I’ll be teaching in soon, a predominantly urban area, I can expect to have African American students in my class. Though I personally cannot understand what it means to be an African American, I can at least embrace a home language in my classroom that an African American student may be comfortable with. Lisa Delpit says, “All people have the right to their own language. We cannot constantly correct children and expect them to continue to want to talk like us.” (32) I cannot expect my students to change whom they are, a home language being part of their construct, to appease a façade of what “standard English dialect” sounds like.

If I truly want to embrace who my students are, I cannot correct a student for using a home language or code switching. Instead I need to embrace and respect what they are doing as it would help them to become more comfortable with the classroom setting. Delpit offers an interesting point to consider in this conversation, “The even deeper secret was that even those of us who had acquired the “standard dialect” still loved and used aspects of Ebonics all the time.” Even if I taught my students that “standard dialect” was correct, they would still want to use and have the need for Ebonics anyways. Why not incorporate Ebonics into the classroom and embrace the idea? As Delpit makes more clearly, “Student don’t identify with the teachers who question their intelligence or with a curriculum that ignores their existence.” If I am constantly telling my students that their home language, the language of comfort, is wrong, I will never be able to connect with my students.

I consider Barker’s words strongly; “I begin by building upon a firm respect for each students home language - languages which, after all, are what most of us need to express connection and affection with friends and family, and what we draw upon for much of our art and cultural expression.” In teaching, teachers are faced with the challenge to develop a curriculum that is truly student centered. So, how do I make my classroom student centered while embracing home dialect and Ebonics? Ebonics is a language based in tradition of rhythm and sound and expressive movement. It reflects ethnic celebration and becomes an art form if truly listened to. There is a stereotype that exists which deems Ebonics as unfit and “non-standard,” and some teachers argue there is no place for it in the classroom let alone the real world. I could not disagree more to the idea of Ebonics not having a place in the classroom, and if looked at with an open mind, Ebonics is in essence poetry. All the attributes of African American English reflect that of a lively, emotionally driven, well written poem - Spoken Word.

According to Shiv Raj Desai and Marsh Tyson, spoken word poetry is “a form of poetry that utilizes the strengths of our communities: oral tradition, call-and-response, home languages, storytelling and resistance. Spoken word poetry is usually performed for an audience and must be heard.” I think of poets like Saul Williams, or rapper Common, who implore such techniques through their art. Lines like, “We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue/Statements, such as, “keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically/or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active/and not representative of the individually determined is,” can be heard in Saul Williams’ Coded Language. The lines tell a story and are barbaric yelps crying out for a place to be heard. Williams demonstrates the African American English language and implores a code switching technique to reach a level of comfortableness in expressing feeling. If I showed my students Williams’ poetry and had them write their own to present, I would not only be embracing who my students are, creating a student centered environment, but I would be also teaching them that there is a place for them to be whom they are and what they want to be.

If students opened up through this method, “this proves to be an opportunity to understand the context in which our students are coming from. Once we can familiarize ourselves with the struggles our students grapple with internally, both in and outside of school, we can connect with them on a more human, personal level. More importantly, by simply listening to our students and creating a space where they can begin to articulate their thoughts and ideas in written and spoken form, we can further assist them in developing a love for written and spoken word.” My goal as a teacher must, and will be to truly listen to my students. Spoken word poetry not only allows students to write, speak, and perform in a comfortable way, it also allows me, the educator, to understand a different culture, a different language, and who my students are and can be inside and out of the classroom.

Works Cited

Delpit, Lisa D., and Joanne Kilgour. Dowdy. The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom. New York: New, 2008. Print. PGS. 31-59. Barker, Judith.

Desai, Shiv Raj, and Tyson Marsh. "Weaving Multiple Dialects in the Classroom Discourse: Poetry and Spoken Word as a Critical Teaching Tool." Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 9.2 (2005): 71-90. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 13 Sept. 2011.

Erin J. Quinn, et al. "African American English-Speaking Students: An Examination of the Relationship between Dialect Shifting and Reading Outcomes." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52.4 (2009): 839-855. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 13 Sept. 2011.

In My Travels

So, in my wonderful excursions to all that is downtown Fredonia, I came across this wonderful piece of street art I feel that I must share. I was initially struck with the images wonderful artistic value and questioned why such a piece wouldn't be in a place like Allbright? The image we see here is to be found on a "garage" behind EBC. I thought to myself, how drunk was the graffiti artist that painted this? Sure it's funny and all but it's so disrespectful. I mean on principal alone this really sucks for the homeowner, but if someone is really going to go out of their way to risk getting into trouble to graffiti, do you think they could at least spell garage right? Ok, so maybe I am being too hypercritical/correct, but I mean come on now . . . can you imagine going back to the site you just graffitied, thinking you were "the bomb" the night before and realizing you spelled "garage" wrong? Sure, I see what the artist was trying to do, "situational irony" maybe for less of a better term, but come on people! - G-A-R-A-G-E. Next time you decide to spray paint something, make sure your spelling is correct. Jokes on you.  Thank you Spell Check Incompetent Street Monet.  Just wanted to share.

Short Paper Proposal

Short Paper Proposal

Frank DiMaria

For my short paper I would like to investigate various “home” dialects that students would use within a classroom, and also investigate how teachers view allowing students to use their own home language within the classroom. I would like to ask questions like, what are considered home dialects? How do these dialects differ between at risk students and higher income school districts? And what are the various educational views concerning allowing or rejecting a students home language within the classroom. I will start my investigation by doing some Internet research on the topic, and I will also contact a friend who is a speech and English teacher for at risk students in Buffalo.

Working Bibliography

The Skin We Speak, Lisa Delpit. 

Mrs. Reiser, speech/English teacher.

I don’t care that your commas are in the right place as long as I know your heart is.

The conversation after last class left me thinking a lot about how we perceive one another through language and the façade that we all tend to put on of grammatical perfection. We become conscious of our own insecurities with language while speaking to someone who has been deemed a “red pen maniac.” While monitoring the miniscule details of speech that don’t make a difference in the bigger picture of the conversation, we misspeak our thoughts even worse then if we just said what we had to. In class as I was trying to make a comment I even misspoke and got all flipped flopped in my thoughts as I stopped dead in the middle of a thought to correct myself, hoping maybe to regain some sense of academic credibility to the class. It’s been really interesting to read all the pet peeves that the dear abbey column brought up. What is perhaps even more interesting is hearing my classmates talk about their own pet peeves with grammar usage. I can only think, “How many times do those individual criticism probably make the same mistakes?” For me I really don’t see the use in being such a stuck up person about grammar. I would much rather pay attention to the person I am speaking to rather than the way the person speaks. How can I ever get to know someone, let alone know my students, if I am constantly correcting them and saying that the way they speak is inadequate for my “well conditioned” ears?  After reading the article as well I must say I was a bit disheartened to think that people really criticize so much others way of speaking that language can now be perceived as a sign of class. For those people I would love to see them correcting and criticizing the way my 12^th grade inner city New York class speaks to their faces.  Talk about attitude adjustment. I came across this youtube video of Taylor Mali reciting a poem about speaking. He comments on how people fear him because he is a teacher and they have a prejudged image that all English teachers will whip out a red pen and start correcting the misspoken words in the air. (If I ever become that teacher please someone tell me to retire). But, he left the poem at this, “I don’t care that your commas are in the right place as long as I know your heart is.” If some teachers truly had this mentality kids would open up and talk and write and legitimately like English more. Isn’t the true purpose of teachers to support and encourage?

Wolverines Are The Mascot For The Grammar Police

So, this picture appeared on yahoo’s front page today and it pretty much coincided completely with what we were talking about in class today regarding the “grammar police!!!!!!” The headline of the article said “grammar fail,” as if some pretentious young columnist had nothing else to write about other than the misprint on the tee. Now, for me personally, the lack of apostrophe that occurs in the word “let’s” does not hinder my understanding of the message the tee is trying to tell. “let’s go Michigan,” is what I am getting from the print and as a matter of fact, until I actually look at the picture longer, I didn’t even notice there was something wrong.

As was brought up in class today, we spoke a lot about strictness while referring to grammar usage. We also spoke about the importance of using grammar properly in the professional sector of this world. Now, I do see why the company selling this tee would be upset with whoever printed the shirt, but at the same time I feel that it’s a bit drastic to call the mistake a complete fail. I strongly believe that anyone could look at the shirt and derive meaning and although the phrase may be incorrect as far as grammar usage goes, it’s still a good print with a good message. What peeves me is the fact that yahoo took the time to put forth this article about the misprint as a headline when I feel there are much more important things to bring to the attention of the world. How about all the hurricanes or stock market prices falling or even Steve Jobs retirement? I don’t know, and maybe some would call me crazy but I feel that this improper grammar usage as a headline is ridiculous and though I see the importance of the all-powerful apostrophe, maybe I am unable to see the relevance of having said apostrophe in the building of meaning. We learn by firstly making meaning (top - bottom learning) and not by diagnosing the nuts and bolts of grammar. We learn by experiencing the world and defining things in our own internal dictionary and although there is a time and place for the MLA handbook, I would rather sit back, relax and scream, “lets go Michigan.”

Grammar Police

I am taking this course because, to state simply, I am not as proficient as I should be with grammar and grammar usage. I have never been my entire life and I hope that this class helps me change things around. Going into the field of teaching - English at that - I am aware of the importance of being proficient with the topic. Grammar to me has always been a scary thing. Up until about grade three I was always deemed an English out cast. By this I mean I was assigned into the “special” reading groups and made to read “special” books. Everyone thought that I was dumb and that I would never be able to read, until one day my mom took me to the eye doctors. Turned out I was basically blind, that is without the assistance of glasses. Long story short, I got my new pair of spectacles and haven’t stopped reading to this day. From a young age I never had the chance to learn that basic “what’s a verb” or “proper usage of a comma.” I never developed a grammatical foundation so to speak. I have of course gotten much better in understanding things like a verb and commas but I feel that I can improve even more. Today Susan asked us to think about what we wanted to get out of the course. Well, for me I want to put myself through the perhaps deemed boring, monotonous at times, activities which will allow me to build a solid foundation in using and teaching grammar properly.  This is especially important to me because I will be teaching soon and teaching grammar will come up in my classroom. I will probably never be part of the grammar police force that so many of my piers deem themselves a part of but I do understand the importance of proper grammar usage in my own life. On the same note, I will always look at my students’ ideas over improper grammar usage on assignments and in general conversation, but I want to have the tools to be able to show my students how using grammar properly can improve their writing.