Wheeeeeew! It has been a very long and busy first three weeks. I love only taking classes within the discipline (English Education), it somehow makes getting up in the morning just a bit easier… Okay, a lot easier. A lot of my classes seem to be culminating or heading towards the ‘end’ that I really want. That is, of course, to teach English. The place where, before studying the teaching of English before, I knew my weakness’ lie is grammar. For that reason, English 326 seems to be moving the fastest for me. Last week was about adverbs, adjectives, nouns, sentence structure, subjects, verbs, etc.
A lot of this information has been new to me from the stand point of allowing me to be able to technically describe (teach) this information to someone who did not already know it. It’s kind of a novel concept for me because I never have a lot of trouble with grammar. Syntax comes from growing up with the language and grammar comes from avoiding the things I used to not know how to use, like dashes or colons. So far I have learned all (okay most) of the apostrophe rules and uses*, along with the way to use the dash, and the colon. I definitely don’t see myself avoiding or misusing, especially in the case of the dash, this knowledge in my writing ever again.
One thing I know I will continue to work on is moving adverbs around in sentences to keep them varied, diverse, and interesting. For example, I worked MADLY on this blog post (MADLY, I worked on this blog post; I worked on this blog post MADLY; I MADLY worked on this blog post). The first way I had it was how I write most of the time I think; with the adverb following the verb. I plan on continuing to work with the other ways into my writing more often.
One question I have: is the use of ellipses only appropriate in text messages and other informal writing?
*Refer to B.P.P.N.A.G.
I think you have opened my eyes to grammar, Kyle. The silly sentences really help me understand adverbs, adjectives and linking phrases. So there you go, you have already taught someone about grammar! I think having a good attitude in class really helps learning and helps the people around you learn as well. Just remember that our dirty sentences with linking phrases and transitive and intransitive verbs probably aren't appropriate for teaching little children in the future :) see you in about an hour and a half!!
ReplyDeleteKyle,
ReplyDeleteYou can use elipses in academic writing. In a very formal sense, you use elipses in a quote when you omit words from the original text (although you probably remembered that once I said it). You can also use elipses for other reasons in academic writing, but since elipses usually signify hesitation or suspense or similar emotions, we tend to avoid them in academic writing.