ST: High School English

[Anubis]

I had to teach these kids what A FUCKING NOUN WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL.

Id like to comment on this. Now i knew what a noun was in HS however i don't ever remember learning about nouns and verbs in school. I'm positive i learned what they were through mad libs. I was 25 or so the first time i ever saw a sentence diagram, and that's only because someone made a thread about it on AT sometime in the past 5 years or so. Pub schools have been failing for a long time. Their quality varies way to much. The no child left behind shit has only made them all worse

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Not ONE of those three -- I'd, I had, or I would -- fit grammatically, you unbelievable nitwit.

Am I missing something? "I would consider myself..." is grammatically correct, and the contraction "I'd" fits. The "affluent" gaffe is indefensible, though.

 

[meltdown75]

lol, look at the geezers reading forum posts and thinking that they're indicative of actual intelligence levels.

hey old man, no one gives a crap about what they post on the internet.

everyone, get off oldsmobile's lawn.

 

[tk149]

Ok mr smarty pant. What is the deal with shakespear. Why, after 400 years do english teachers still fap over his shit. Seriously that Macbeth thing is uber boring. I like reading, i was always read at a higher standard than most, the assigned books SUCKED DONKEYS BALLS. One flew over the cookoos nest was BORING.

Was this paragraph an attempt at irony?

 

[eits]

Ok mr smarty pant. What is the deal with shakespear. Why, after 400 years do english teachers still fap over his shit. Seriously that Macbeth thing is uber boring. I like reading, i was always read at a higher standard than most, the assigned books SUCKED DONKEYS BALLS. One flew over the cookoos nest was BORING.

please tell me this is supposed to be a joke...

 

[Anubis]

please tell me this is supposed to be a joke...

while hes prob trolling most books assigned in HS english are really boring or not in a genre that most HS kids care about

 

[tk149]

Id like to comment on this. Now i knew what a noun was in HS however i don't ever remember learning about nouns and verbs in school. I'm positive i learned what they were through mad libs. I was 25 or so the first time i ever saw a sentence diagram, and that's only because someone made a thread about it on AT sometime in the past 5 years or so. Pub schools have been failing for a long time. Their quality varies way to much. The no child left behind shit has only made them all worse

Wow! I learned diagramming sentences in seventh grade. It felt like we spent months on the subject, but it was probably less than that. It was just so boring. I hated it, but I could tell you what a gerund, predicate, or present participle was! Diagramming probably did help my writing ability. Athough it has gone downhill in the last 20 years.

 

[tk149]

while hes prob trolling most books assigned in HS english are really boring.

This is true, but as I have grown older, I have reread some of those books, and I appreciate them much more now. I think that you need a certain amount of experience (and patience) before you can truly appreciate some of the classics.

 

[olds]

things have changed in the last 100 years since you've been to high school.

Would you say the change was for the better?

 

[Anubis]

This is true, but as I have grown older, I have reread some of those books, and I appreciate them much more now. I think that you need a certain amount of experience (and patience) before you can truly appreciate some of the classics.

I agree with this

 

[olds]

lol, look at the geezers reading forum posts and thinking that they're indicative of actual intelligence levels.

hey old man, no one gives a crap about what they post on the internet.

everyone, get off oldsmobile's lawn.

I never mentioned forum posts. You added that gem.
So, am I to believe that reading comprehension is not covered either?

 

[ElFenix]

I really didn't get into shakes in high school, mostly because I was obstinate. I went to college and ultimately ended up with an English degree. My final course, taken as an independent study and ignored until the deadline came up was a survey of Shakespeare. The guy is fucking hilarious, and his language is tight. He has references inside of references, and Romeo and Juliet is filled with dick jokes. More puns per square meter than anything ATOT has accomplished.

if school boards had any idea what the bard was actually writing he'd be on the banned book list

 

[Anubis]

if school boards had any idea what the bard was actually writing he'd be on the banned book list

lol yea instead they ban Harry potter

 

[nerp]

well, irregardless, that point is mute.

I know this is a joke, but reading it still pissess me the fuck off.

 

[BoomerD]

English skills are indeed deteriorating.

I saw numerous examples of this while attending community college.

There were far too many youngsters fresh out of high school who could barely write, let alone write a proper essay.

I hadn't taken an English class in about 40 years, so one of the first classes I took was a "remedial English" class to refresh me on the "nuts and bolts" of proper English.

I was surprised at how much I had either forgotten...or just didn't learn because I dropped out of high school in my sophmore year.

 

[Lean L]

Is English taught in high school any more? It's been a while since I attended and it seems that many younger folks have a hard time forming a paragraph or even a proper thought.
The writing seems so jumbled.

I seem to remember that we were required to take 7 "levels" which worked out to 3 - 3.5 years.
My high school was 9th - 12th grade.

I know when I started high school, we had to take 4 years of PE. My junior year, they dropped it to 2.

whoa... No one else remembers hs during biblical times.

 

[Molondo]

self-pwnage,

So to fix the problem would you suggest a neck adjustment? hahaha

 

[Schfifty Five]

self-pwnage,

What's wrong w/ that sentence? Is that a fragment or a run-on?

 

[Perknose]

Am I missing something? "I would consider myself..." is grammatically correct, and the contraction "I'd" fits. The "affluent" gaffe is indefensible, though.

At the risk of prolonging all of this, which most people don't care about, I'll answer you. It's a bit more subtle than many here can or will grasp, though.

The sentence in question:

"I'd consider myself fairly affluent in English (look, I even used a big word! ), but I honestly hate being bored."

Grammatically, he is saying he'd consider himself fluent EXCEPT for the fact that he hates being bored. This is NONSENSE, grammatically.

Whether or not he hates being bored has NO bearing on whether he considers himself fluent in English. See?

He considers himself fluent in English no matter what!

He may not write or speak fluently at any one time because he "hates being bored" BUT he always considers himself fluent in English. This is his unvarying opinion of himself.

This highly favorable self-evaluation is NOT dependent or conditional on anything, let alone what is stated in the other clause in his sentence; therefore it was grammatically incorrect of him to use the conditional tense "would", even as a contraction.

Suffice it to say, the guy is not close to being fluent in English, despite whatever his Mother and all his lazy-assed teachers may have told him.

 

[Perknose]

What's wrong w/ that sentence? Is that a fragment or a run-on?

Please don't hate on me, I didn't point this one out, hell I wasn't the first to point the other guy's mistakes out in a thread about English.

Just look at what eits bolded:

their grammar and spelling is

Plural subject, singular noun.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

At the risk of prolonging all of this, which most people don't care about, I'll answer you. It's a bit more subtle than many here can or will grasp, though.

The sentence in question:Grammatically, he is saying he'd consider himself fluent EXCEPT for the fact that he hates being bored. This is NONSENSE, grammatically.

Whether or not he hates being bored has NO bearing on whether he considers himself fluent in English. See?

He considers himself fluent in English no matter what!

He may not write or speak fluently at any one time because he "hates being bored" BUT he always considers himself fluent in English. This is his unvarying opinion of himself.

This highly favorable self-evaluation is NOT dependent or conditional on anything, let alone what is stated in the other clause in his sentence; therefore it was grammatically incorrect of him to use the conditional tense "would", even as a contraction.

Suffice it to say, the guy is not close to being fluent in English, despite whatever his Mother and all his lazy-assed teachers may have told him.

You are describing a logical problem, not a grammatical one.

 

[Apple Of Sodom]

Suffice it to say, the guy is not close to being fluent in English, despite whatever his Mother and all his lazy-assed teachers may have told him.

Mother, in this particular context, is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized.



Edit:

I was homeschooled and taught english as if it were a second language. I learned about nouns, infinitives, adverbs, predicates, sentence agreement, sentence diagrams... all of that boring stuff. I'm sorry, but teaching young children a language, even if it is their native language, shouldn't be done by throwing them a book. You wouldn't just give a bunch of math students a list of equations and go "Here, figure out what all of this means." No, you teach them the foundation and then build on it. Learning how to add and subtract would be like learning what a verb is. Without knowing what a + does, how can one write an equation? Without know that every sentence needs a noun, how can one write a sentence?

I have my own idea about why our school system is failing. I firmly believe that a stupid population is easier to control than an intelligent population.

 

[Perknose]

You are describing a logical problem, not a grammatical one.

Sigh.

I was describing the underlying logical basis for his grammatical mistake.

You cannot properly use the conditional tense (would) in a clause in a sentence wherein the other clause is not what the first clause is conditioned upon!

That is a grammatical mistake.

His sentence is grammatically incorrect.

 

[InflatableBuddha]

while hes prob trolling most books assigned in HS english are really boring or not in a genre that most HS kids care about

For some of my English assignments, I was allowed to choose a novel from an approved list. Our teacher even made suggestions based on the subject matter of different books, to increase the likelihood we would enjoy reading our chosen books.

For the record, I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a couple summers ago, and it was one of the few books that I have honestly burst out laughing while reading. It's brilliant.

Some good books I read in HS:

Animal Farm
1984
Brave New World (I read this 3 times)
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catcher in the Rye

Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Julius Caesar were OK, but I didn't really like Of Mice and Men.

 

[Perknose]

Mother, in this particular context, is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized.

You are correct, sir. I do so in most instances anyway, out of general respect for dear ol' Mom!