Blog Post 4

1.     Dashes

As I read both chapters of Grammar Alive and the Christiansen article, I found myself both heartily agreeing—and disagreeing—with what was being said. (English 326:Blog Post number 2, September 2015)

In this example, the dash is being used as a parenthetical. Dashes used in place of parentheses or commas are really good at making sure to show that what is in the dashes are separate from the sentence but also integral. These are more of an aside, the writers feelings, as opposed to extra information that is typically supplied with the use of commas.

“…[S]he did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothing. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her strait black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English adolescents… Unfortunately… There was no denying she had a good brain.”

—James D. Watson. The Double Helix. 1968

(English 298: Final Research Paper. Fall 2014)

In this particular example, the dash is used to show an attribution. This is a quote I used in my final research paper a few semesters back and I used it to start my entire paper. Because of the size of the quote, and that fact that it needs to stand alone, apart from the rest of the paper, a simple parenthetical citation will not suffice. In cases like this you use dashes to show who gave the quote.

Honestly it can get annoying—but I digress. (English 326: Blog Post 2. September 2015)

Similar to the first example, dashes set apart the authors personal thoughts. It can also show a change in mood. If you are writing a piece that is generally serious, but want to add something to change the mood briefly, a dash is a good way to go. It can be used to add additional information that is either important to the sentence, or just a fun aside.

2.     Semicolons

In 1953, Franklin produced the photograph that changed the world’s view of DNA; the “B” form image of a section of DNA, proving its double helical structure. (English 298: Final Research Paper. Fall 2014)

This is an example of how not to use a semicolon. Originally I had used a colon here but Word thought it needed to be a semicolon. Listening to Word’s suggestions is not always the best choice. Semicolons are meant to join two full sentences, not sentence fragments. Because what follows the semicolon is not a complete sentence, it cannot be used here.

English is the world’s dominant language right now; it’s also one of the most versatile. English 326: Blog Post 2. September 2015)

This is a classic example of a semicolon connecting to clauses that can easily stand alone. The rhetoric behind the use of a semicolon vs. a period is to show that, while these two sentences are separate, they also are linked together. If you were to use a period here instead, then it wouldn’t flow the same.

But getting in was the easy part; once in the school you chose a career path, Architecture or Medical Studies. (Honors 280: Final Short Story. Spring 2015)

This is from a creative short story I wrote last semester for one of my Honors classes. Similar to the last example, the rhetoric behind this is that the two separate clauses are actually linked. It shows that what comes after the semicolon explains more what comes before. Because this was a creative piece, the clause before the semicolon is not a full clause, it builds off the sentence before it.

3.     Brainstorming

For my final portfolio I was thinking about doing something along the lines of a poster or a scrapbook, or a flip-book. As for my ultimate audience, I am thinking high school, though to be honest I am still not sure.

Blog Post 3

After reading the article, I found myself agreeing with Shaugnessy when he said, “[Basic writers] write the way they do, not because they are slow or non-verbal . . . but because they are beginners and must, like all beginners, learn by making mistakes. (Shaugnessy 32.)”  This is something I think all teachers and aspiring teachers should take to heart (not just English teachers) (used to show an aside) and realize that making mistakes is only a part of the natural learning process and shouldn’t be looked at with contempt. I myself (looking back on my own memories reflectively) remember making multiple mistakes when first beginning to learn the more complex subjects in grammar and any number of other subjects. My teachers would always put me down when I made a mistake, except for my math teacher. She would show me how and why I made a mistake and how I could fix it so that I wouldn’t make it again. It is this type of environment, I was able to learn so much more than in traditional teachings, where mistakes are punished and that is the end of the story.

As stated in the article, the biggest problem with todays grammar lessons is that they aren’t applicable to actual daily speech. Students learn cut-and-dry methods of applying grammar just long enough to pass the quiz, then lose the information immediately. “Essentially, DOL-type exercises ask students to apply knowledge of standard grammar rules in an arbitrary, context-free situation using safe, cherry-picked samples containing rule-specific mistakes” (Crovitz, pg. 33). This shows how students can’t really apply what they are being taught in schools to their lives, much less their writing.

As I read the different lessons in the DOL section of the article, one stood out to me because it seems to also encompass the SRTOL ideas that we have been talking about so far this semester. It’s: “Discuss contextual differences between similar statements with different registers. Students articulate situations that might appropriately call for either sentence. Sentence A: I am going to buy one of those boats. Sentence B: I'ma get me one them boats.” I really liked this idea of a lesson. It is one thing to know that there are other forms of English out there; it’s another to come face-to-face with them.

One way that this could be turned into an actual lesson is, if you have students from different parts of the country you could ask them all to say the same sentence in different ways, like above. Or you could look in different forms of literature to find sentences that are basically the same just said differently. Students could identify what makes the sentences different and how the rhetoric changes slightly with the different ways of saying it.

Blog Post 2

As I read both chapters of Grammar Alive and the Christiansen article, I found myself both heartily agreeing—and disagreeing—with what was being said[a side comment]. A contradiction, I know, but it is the truth. The main gist of these two pieces of work is that students all have a right to their own form of language. We all have different circumstances of life that changes our identity, our surroundings affect us in numerous ways; one of which is our use of language[the combining of two similar full sentences]. Take me for example: I was born in Northwest Florida, but my mom and the vast majority of my family is from Louisiana, we then moved to Arizona, then to Germany, then to Florida, then to Hawaii, and now I find myself here in Washington. All of this has resulted in a language that is a hodgepodge of many different cultures. I spell many of my words in the British-English style, I use words and pronunciations that are distinctly southern, and because I am used to talking to people that don’t speak English, I take care to fully enunciate most of my words.

One may ask how this affects me in grammar. For the most part, what seems to get me in the most trouble with my American teachers, is my use of British spelling. As I said in my last Blog, I have had teachers in the past accuse me of plagiarism because I use spelling of words not used here in America. For the most part, however, my own brand of “language” is found in speech, which adds cause for many people to give me odd looks, or tease me, when I say words that are simply pronounced different, or are never used, here in the northwest. Honestly it can get annoying—but I digress.

Because I can fully relate with Christiansen, I do believe that we should all have a right to our own language, especially in speech, and should realize that we all already know grammar and it can’t be retaught to us. That being said, I am a firm believer that kids in school need to be taught a “proper” version of English. Almost every language in existence has its dialects, and then a proper dialect that people use when talking to others from outside their region. We don’t have this in America. When someone from Georgia and someone from New Jersey meet, there is a language barrier, and we have no way to overcome that. THAT is the purpose of proper grammar and proper language, to encourage communications across the continent and the world. English is the world’s dominant language right now; it’s also one of the most versatile. We need a form of English taught in all English speaking countries so that we can bring the world just a little bit closer together.