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One of the punctuation rules my kids have to master this year is how to punctuate introductory prepositional phrases. Because so many of the kids come to me not knowing a preposition from a hole in the ground, I use a variety of strategies to help them recognize the beast.
Many teachers use the device of the airplane and the clouds:
The plane flew _______________________ the clouds.
And many prepositions comfortably fill in that blank:
The plane flew around the clouds.
....beneath the clouds.
...over the clouds.
And so on.
But nothing's perfect in English.
I'm thinking about giving my kids a group of prepositions, such as the one I show below, to try in the airplane model with the purpose of identifying the black sheep prepositions, so to speak.
For instance, out of the following set of prepositions, which would you argue do not fit the model in a way that makes a sensible English sentence?
aboard, about, above, according to, across, across from, after, against, along, alongside, alongside of, along with, amid, among, apart from, around, aside from, at, away from, back of, because of, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, by means of, concerning, considering, despite.
Thanks for taking a quick look. (You might ask yourself, "Does this sentence make sense out of context?")
I see several that work lamely at best, and, in an essay, would cause a lot of confusion.
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Concerning? Never! The rest are fine.
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The rest aren't fine:
The plane flew but the clouds.
The plane flew besides the clouds.
The plane flew considering the clouds.
...and there might be another in addition to the one you identified above that I repeat below, Milo, but I haven't carefully analyzed the list yet:
The plane flew concerning the clouds.
Edit: "According to the road map, our route was wrong-minded." Now, given the use of "according to" in that sentence, could we make a leap and say the sentence, "The plane flew according to the clouds." I don't think so. It seems lame to me.
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The plane flew; (ah) but the clouds. The plane flew besides the clouds. (colloquialism) (amazing) The plane flew - considering the clouds. But don't cha know, concerning joins the plane and the clouds but indicates no relationship. Wordwind, have you become prim and proper? 
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my kids have to master how to punctuate introductory prepositional phrasesInstead of teaching your kids how to punctuate "introductory prepositional phrases", just tell them to punctuate "introductory phrases". Problem solved. You don't have to be a mechanic to drive a vehicle. Learn to drive first, then get your hands greasy under the hood if it suits you. It doesn't suit everyone. Just the suits at the Board of Education.
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You don't have to be a mechanic to drive a vehicle.With all due respect, Wordwind, it seems to me that there should be a class called "Common Sense Writing" which students have to take before they are introduced to the "rules" of punctuation and a whole lot of other "rules". "Common Sense Writing" would teach students that the purpose of "rules" is not to frustrate and confuse them (as most students naturally assume), but to make it easier for the reader to understand what they are writing. The first thing a teacher of "Common Sense Writing" would do is put an unpunctuated sentence or sentences on the blackboard which would benefit from the addition of punctuation. Then that teacher would allow the students to discover for themselves, by speaking the sentence aloud, how that sentence becomes clearer and more understandable and more emphatic by inserting 'breaks', or 'pauses' or 'little breaths' in the sentence -- which eggheads call "punctuation". Once the students get into the rhythm of it, tell them that there isn't anything else to master. All this "introductory prepositional phrase" hogwash is just the mechanical stuff under the hood of the car. Who needs it if you just want to learn how to become a good driver? Then students should be told that mechanics don't necessarily make better drivers than people who don't know a carburetor from a tailpipe. In fact, there is a danger that a mechanic will pay too much attention to what is going on under the hood and not enough attention to what is going on in the road ahead. Contrary to the impression which the "rulebooks" give, the rules serve good writing, not the other way around. Good writing is clear, understandable writing - in other words, "Common Sense Writing".
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I wanted to say that Common Sense Writing is a Paine, but I decided to desist. Yeah, right.
All seriousness aside, Plutarch, I like your approach immensely. Have you ever thought of teaching?
TEd
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All seriousness aside, Plutarch, I like your approach immenselyNow, there is an evasive encomium if every I saw one, TEd Rem. But I'll bite anyway. Since what I am advocating is "common sense", I can't take uncommon credit for advocating it, and it might be awkward for you to belittle me for exercising it. I happen to think that the education system has long since forgotten, if it ever knew, what the object is of grammar and english literature studies. Rhythm is the key to the power and the beauty of our language. But who teaches rhythm in conjunction with grammar and english literature at any level in our public school system? Kids get rhythm. Sometimes they get it better than their english teachers. Perhaps most times. If english teachers treated an unpunctuated sentence like a line of music, it wouldn't be long before the students were teaching the lesson. They'd be rockin' around the classroom clock. I Googled "educator Paine" and came up with Thomas Paine who "wrote the pamphlet Common Sense in 1776". Good one, TEd Rem. I haven't thought of becoming a teacher, TEd Rem, but if I wrote a book on Grammar, I would call it "Rockin' Around the Classroom Clock". Or, simply, Grammar Rocks.
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re: Rhythm is the key to the power and the beauty of our language. But who teaches rhythm in conjunction with grammar and english literature at any level in our public school system?
yes, i am old, and its less true today, but i learned (and had a poetry text book!) from 2nd grade onward.
i was required to learn recertation (there is a word that never really made it into my writen vocabulary--by the time i should have learned it, the idea was passe!) pieces.. every one in school did..
we had to memorize a poem, and stand up in front of the class and recite it. any poem.
one of the few childhood books in my house was Robert Lewis Stevenson's 'A Childrens Garden of Verses' i learned (and can still recite) "I have a little shadow"
by the time my kids were in school, there were no poetry books, and almost no poetry. So i bought these books for my kids. several of them survived my moving 3 times! (i still have them!)
My kids didn't have to memorize Edward Lears "the owl and the the pussy cat" or "the gingham dog and the calico cat" or any of the other poems, but they did grow up hearing them. and christina rossetti's poems, and other favorites from my childhood.
Parents have a responsiblity, too. Dr suess is and remains beloved because of this use of rhythm and rhymes.
i think the popularity of rap is because there was a void in rhythmic speach.. rap helps fill it. (goodness knows, now days to experess and interest in poetry is to be called a total nerd.. (see nerd thread in AWAD in Schools for what that means)
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This reminds me of that movie with Jon Voigt (a much younger Jon Voigt), based on the book "The Water Is Wide"...darn it, what was the movie title?? The one where he went to teach on that island off South Carolina and found the kids ignorant of virtually everything--and one of the ways he got them to learn was by using rhythm--he'd chant a line, then have the kids repeat it.
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I'd say that rote memorization and rhythm are not enough. The problem I've run across again and again teaching both children and adults is concrete versus abstract thinking. This problem is exacerbated by current pedagogical practices: the teaching of pragamtic skills rather than rhetorical and grammatrical ones. (People don't take a class in Web standards and history, but they do take classes in FrontPage 2002 or Photoshop 7.) It's not enough to make kids memorize poetry. You have to make them study it, analyze it, write it, and enjoy it.
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I'd say that rote memorization and rhythm are not enough.How true, jheem, but, in my opinion, "analyzing" great literature is something one does, or should do, after, not before, experiencing it. Analysis is an impediment to visceral enjoyment as much with literature as with music or with the visual arts, at least on first exposure. That is the fatal flaw in how literature is "taught" to students, I suspect; that and the fact that many english teachers are mindless of the 'music' in great literature. In my school days, Shakespeare was taught by a humorless, 'army barracks' spinster who dissected it line by line, robbing it of all its poetry. In retrospect, I have often wondered if she even knew that Shakespeare was, above all else, a poet -- "the immortal bard". She required everyone to memorize lengthy passages from Macbeth and some complete sonnets for periodic written tests, but she never explained that there was any reason to do this except for the pure torture of it. She compounded the torture by awarding marks for absolutely precise punctuation, for instance, you lost a mark for using a semi-colon instead of a colon, a colon instead of a hyphen, and so on. It was really memory work for the sake of memory work, not memory work as a portal to the genius of the playwright and the transcendent power and beauty of the english language, transcendent power and beauty which reaches its zenith in the sometimes delicate, sometimes jubilant, sometimes volcanic brushstrokes of "the immortal bard". I can remember one student, overall the best in the class [we called him "The Machine"], who was totally perplexed by this passage in Macbeth spoken by Macbeth as he contemplates the murder of Duncan: "Whilst I threat, he lives. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives". I told "The Machine" not to analyze it, but to step back from it, to let it flow over him; in short, to feel it. He honestly didn't understand it was poetry. Then he got it. And he loved it.
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Pooh-Bah
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I lucked out with an English teacher, Mrs. Sam, who not only taught us to take a poem apart to see how it worked, but would then put it back together to show us why we bothered.
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aboard, about, above, according to, across, across from, after, against, along, alongside, alongside of, along with, amid, among, apart from, around, aside from, at, away from, back of, because of, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, by means of, concerning, considering, despite.
There's a couple in there that aren't prepositions, specifically, but, concerning, and considering.
There are two schools of thought on punctuation, which we can call grammatical and rhetorical. The rhetorical uses commas to indicate pauses in speech and the grammatical uses them to say things about the relationship of words to each other in a sentence. A classic example of the difference might be seen in the phrase my wife Mary and I. The rhetorical punctuator would leave that phrase unsullied by any commas, but the grammatical punctuator would sneer at the suggestion that the speaker had another wife lurking in the wings somewhere, preferring to punctuate it my wife, Mary, and I.
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Ours was like a poem:
in, over, under, on, across, against, around,
beneath, beside, between, below,
above, for, by, beyond,
down, up, before, within,
from, to, after, near,
during, toward, among
There was a particular 'meter' to it, which made it stick in my head these many years.
We also had one for the forms of the verb 'to be'. Later.
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the 'grammar's song i remember, (to the tune of Yankee doodle went to town) is for copulative verb--
Be, seen, become, appear,
Look, taste, grow, sound, remain, smell
Copulative verbs take nomnative,
Predicate noun or adjective! (case is implied)
it helped get me through the NY State English regents!
garrison keeler used to have 'the Department of folk songs] as a segment on his show, and it featured many ditties like the one above that helped thousand of school kids learn some of the finer points of grammar.
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There are two schools of thought on punctuationIt seems to me that one school would be enough, Faldage.
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In reply to:
There's a couple in there that aren't prepositions, specifically, but, concerning, and considering.
Faldage, your information is incomplete. True, the words but, concerning, considering do function in some sentences differently from prepositions. In numerous grammar books and dictionaries, however, but, concerning, and considering are shown as prepositions in function. It completely depends upon how the words are used in specific sentences. Check MW and you'll see.
I understand where you're coming from in that 'consider' is a verb and 'considering' is the present participle form. However, for whatever reasons of time and agreement that cause these changes in how words are categorized, the function of 'considering' in a preposition-like role in a sentence has occurred often enough that it can be parsed as a preposition. The same goes for 'concerning.' I can't say I'm happy with verbs morphing into prepositions, but apparently this categorization is not very recent. In my MW (Riverside, 1987), both participles have been so categorized. Function is all here.
'But' is easier to explain. It simply means the same as the preposition 'except' as in the sentence "Everyone but Charlie passed the test." I think the case of participles morphing into prepositions is a very interesting one. Apparently, from what I've read in my grandfather's 19th century Webster's, even 'but' itself (the preposition) was at one time a participle from some Saxon word. I would copy out the entire word history of the preposition 'but,' but it's simply too long. What is interesting is in the 19th century, before 'but' was categorized as a preposition--and I'm not speaking of the conjunction 'but' in any way--'but' was categorized as a participle! That's somehow delightful. I don't know when Webster's stopped categorizing what is now our preposition 'but' as a participle and began to name it, instead, as a preposition.
The abbreviated list of prepositions I copied out in the thread starter, by the way, comes from one of the grammar books that is used in Chesterfield County.
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The abbreviated list of prepositions I copied out in the thread starter, by the way, comes from one of the grammar books that is used in Chesterfield County.I am truly awed by your erudition, Wordwind, but if I was a student in Chesterfield County I'd be quaking in my boots at the prospect of writing proper english. If Shakespeare had been exposed to the Chesterfield County catechism, or most any modern grammar school catechism, I daresay english literature would have been the poorer for it. No doubt his genius would have taken flight, but it would have taken flight on clipped wings. My guess is that he was certain enough of his powers that the damage would have been minimal. Modern day grammar school lessons are less of a shackle for the gifted than for ordinary students, I suspect. How many students who might have discovered enjoyment in writing have become casualties of this catechism, I wonder? It is said that no-one writes anymore, at least with any respect for the english language. I am sure there are many reasons for this. Could this be one of them? Kids today are too smart to waste their time learning something which is not only painful but pointless. Proficiency in the catechism qualifies a person to teach it and that's about it. No-one would deny that a soupcon of it is useful, even necessary, but in large polysyllabic doses, it is almost certainly grammarcidal to elementary and high school kids. I mean no disrespect to you personally, Wordwind. My comments are directed at the educational system which promulgates stuff like "introductory prepositional phrases" for children under the age of consent.
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re My comments are directed at the educational system which promulgates stuff like "introductory prepositional phrases" for children under the age of consent.This could be the basis for a class action lawsuit. For once, no pun is intended. [Hence, no smiley is appended. ]
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Dear Plutarch,
For the first time in SAT history, students will have a written essay as part of their SAT scores beginning in 2005. Students will have twenty-five minutes to respond to an essay topic, organize their thoughts, write the essay and proofread it. For anyone who has been working with high school writers with less than average verbal skills, this is truly a difficult task, especially since the task will have bearing upon college admissions. However, the essay on the SAT test will now be in place and I like to think that whatever I am doing well in the classroom might help my students become better thinkers, writers, and even higher scorers on this new test. The scope of the writing opportunities my students get to try is wide and varied. Some topics work better than others; free writings are always best--those writings in which students do not have to worry at all about usage and mechanics; essays are hardest, but are very rewarding for me to evaluate by spring because most students have learned to organize their thoughts so that another human being can follow the line of thinking. I happen to love writing, and I do hope I convey in spades my enthusiam for the written word, and most especially the written words of my students.
Your response was interesting to what I initiated as a simple inquiry into one of literally thousands of questions a teacher could pose about writing. Your response was not particularly original. The reason I say not particularly original is because what you wrote has been observed by countless teachers I have personally known and also in thousands upon thousands of articles about writing, poetry, rhythm, the oral tradition in the classroom, and so on. However, you moved from my questioning of a very insignificant model for testing prepositions to expression of your own philosophy about common sense applied in the teaching of writing. Terrific. I agree with you. I also use the practices you described in my own classroom, and I use other practices you didn't mention.
After reading your initial response, I thought, "Plutarch certainly jumps to many conclusions." After reading your response from this morning, I thought, "Plutarch jumps to many more." It is surprising to me to see just how many conclusions you've reached about my own teaching by my simply asking about the preposition model that I found lacking--and certainly wouldn't use as a standard with my own students--and my having mentioned that we do teach students how to punctuate prepositional phrases that begin sentences. You also commented on the list of prepositions that I had simply copied out of the grammar book. I cannot imagine a grammar book lying around that didn't include a list of prepositions, a list of subordinating conjunctions, a list of personal pronouns, and so on. I think lists of examples, whether open or closed sets, are commonly used in all grammar texts. You commented on teaching punctuation of prepositional phrases. For better or worse (and I believe for better), we do work with punctuation as a means the writer has of letting the reader know how his message should sound. Punctuation is to the writer as rests are to the composer, plain and simple, most likely too simple, but perhaps you understand the analogy. I teach ninth grade, and still the tenth grade teachers comment that some students do not use punctuation well for even simple concepts such as items in a series. But writing is a process; it evolves; students improve; teachers improve. I listen carefully to what the teachers around here say, I try their methods, and I view their complaints to my own students so my own will know that some writing traits, such as a poor mastery of punctuation, can give a reader the wrong impression of their own merit. So, I hope you see that you and I do agree, but I will use a phrase that you apparently bristle at (introductory prepositional phrases) simply because that phrase helps some of my students, the more left-brained in the crew. You have to realize that people learn best in different ways. What works for you, Plutarch, could be a method that is anathema to another student. The challenge of a determined teacher is to incorporate many different ways and approaches into the classroom so that the final outcome is a group of students who will write well, write with emotional honesty, and write with confidence. You may have been my Plutarch over there in the desk by the door who detested learning parts of speech, but you may have been the one who, when reading aloud, capitivated the entire class. However, in the other corner is Jordan who, though a horrible oral reader, needs to know the naming of parts, needs to know down to the last detail why this word is called an adjective here but a verb over there. And I do have a Jordan and he must understand word functions, punctuation rules precisely and with some comfort level reached about the--ah, me--exceptions. And you two are just two types among so many who dwell inside the English classroom.
There is a great deal I could write about the virtues of teaching parts of speech, and there is a great deal more I could write about the multitude of ways in which parts of speech are taught. But I won't. I'll just say that, yes, I do teach parts of speech, I love teaching the parts of speech, I bring a lot of imagination to the teaching of parts of speech, and I even quote passages from A Word a Day in these lessons from time to time. It is a very good idea to teach parts of speech, but understanding a dictionary and the scope of the entries does require that one basically understands what a part of speech is. Faldage called me on calling concerning, considering and but prepositions, when he believed they were not; I referred him to MW where those three words are clearly identified as prepositions in certain functions. If Faldage had called me on something in which I had been in error, I would have written here that he was correct. I certainly have done so in the past when in error. But the point I make here is that teachers at the very least should make sure their students understand how words function in the glory of sentences we offer to them so that, at the very least, their students can use their dictionaries with understanding. And that is at the very least, Plutarch.
Let me address writing:
It has been my experience that students learn to look forward to writing when the fear of being marked down for errors is removed and, more importantly, that they know their thoughts will be responded to by a careful and caring teacher. My own students write to me at the beginning of each class, and they tell me what's on their minds: problems, celebrations, observations, narrations--any topic they choose. And I take these usually two-page invitations into their lives and respond honestly to the places that are strongest in terms of expressive strengths. I don't offer advice, and I don't try to overrule their own emotions with my own experience. Instead, if a student writes about an event and recalls an impressive list of details, I will comment on that strength; if a student shows insight into a situation, I comment on that; if a student asks interesting questions of himself, I comment on that. In other words, I am a deeply listening ear--and I care, so I take care to respond. If you've ever wanted someone to listen to you and notice you--really notice you--then I'm your man when it comes to reading your free writings.
Essays are altogether different for the English teacher and student. Essays are the place where rigorous proofreading must occur, not only for usage and mechanics errors, but also for content, organization, and written expression. Yes, the student is still expressing his opinion, but the rigor of essay writing challenges the student to make reasonable arguments and to organize those arguments so that most readers will understand his points. I try to build up my students' confidence through their free writings, and then help them understand how to improve their editing and organizing in the writing of the formal essays. I see the free writings as a safety valve for the rigors required in essay writing. And I see the study of grammar as a tool that helps the student editor.
You name it; we try to do it in English 9: spell, conjugate, parse, speak, read, rap, write, edit, sing, chant, create, negate, hypothesize, order, dream, celebrate.
And we fail at times. And I admit failure at times, such as in the preposition model I offered to the A Word A Day bulletin board readers as an example of a teaching model that struck me as being flawed. But, Plutarch, I will continue to examine any model anyone mentions that resonates with productive possibility if it leads my students toward learning to thrive in writing about their lives, whether formally or informally.
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wonderfully expressed, Ww.
I have one rather unrelated question: do you give lessons in remedial paragraph structure? (just wondering.)
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what a great essay, WW!
there are some here who have seen my formal writing (it takes me hours!) and some here who have heard me speak casually, and in my 'professional voice' --my formal speaking, like my formal writing, is very different.
its much easier for me to slip into formal speaking.. but spelling and grammar are subjects i still stuggle with on a daily basis, in both formal and casual writing.
what i did learn, i learned best from teachers who double scored--1 grade for ideas, organization and presentation, a second grade for spelling, punctuation and grammer--i often scored A+ over F!(as i still often do here!) but, because they recognized my thoughts, i made much more of an effort to work on the details that mattered to them- (spelling punctuation and grammar!) and was able at the end of 2 terms to consistantly get A over C or A over B.
i love spell check (in general, Ænegma is not the most helpful spell checkers!) and i find, that the constant, non critical corrections offered by MSWord help alot! (that is intentional i like alot so much better than a lot!)
there are now new words in my written vocabulary. works, that i avoided for years, that i have now learned to spell!(i now can make decisions! i used to exersize an option (or opt, or opted) i used to choose (or made a choice) but i couldn't spell decide or decision for years, so i never used the word!
Dyslexia, combined with caring but overwhelmed teachers --i attend a small parachial school during the baby boom--some of my elementary classes were packed with 75 students! way too many students for any one teacher to effective teach. the average class size was 65 students (starting in 4th grade)
Still, enough of the basic rules of grammar seeped into my brain. Songs/rhythms and rhymes worked well for me, and so did clear explainations of the rules and exceptions.
i follow many of thread here about grammar, and the discussion between the prescriptives vs. the descriptives closly (but i rarely partcipate) i am still learning grammar.
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and I do hope I convey in spades my enthusiasm for the written word, and most especially the written words of my studentsYou certainly do, Wordwind. Your students are obviously very lucky to have you. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to straighten me out. I am heartened to hear that what little I had to say which passes as valid criticism has been said many times before by many others more qualified than myself to say it, and more likely to do something constructive about it. Thanks again. P.S. I won't apologize for my presumptuous criticisms only because my presumption has resulted in such a marvellous insight into what good teachers can and are doing in the classroom, and this passage, in particular, convinces me that you are amongst the very best of them. You name it; we try to do it in English 9: spell, conjugate, parse, speak, read, rap, write, edit, sing, chant, create, negate, hypothesize, order, dream, celebrate.WOW! Can't say I ever had a teacher who was as passionately committed, creative and capable* as you are. You are a credit to your profession, Wordwind. And a credit to AWADtalk ... says Plutarch slinking away abashed. [Not that I am inviting anyone else to abash me. ] * In addition, you are a very cool cucumber -- which also comes in handy in the classroom, I'll bet.
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That was a joy to read WW. Thank you for sharing your passion.
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In addition, you are a very cool cucumber"Can't you just picture the British soldiers in 1845 Afghanistan taking time out for tea at three o'clock while being attacked by hordes of unpleasant fellows with long swords and rifles? Talk about cool, 'Pass the scones please, old chap?'" http://www.gourmetretailer.com/gourmetretailer/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2036816You would be as formidable a figure in the courtroom as you are in the classroom, Wordwind.
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Still, enough of the basic rules of grammar seeped into my brain. Songs/rhythms and rhymes worked well for me, and so did clear explainations of the rules and exceptions.
i follow many of thread here about grammar, and the discussion between the prescriptives vs. the descriptives closly (but i rarely partcipate) i am still learning grammar.Reading your story makes me wonder if there is some value to all this discussion about grammar after all. I never got a single thing out of a grammar lesson [as far as I know*] but maybe this stuff does "seep" into you, as you say, Of Troy. Now that I think of it, I think I acquired all the grammar I have accumulated to this very day before I entered Grade 1 ... listening to my parents talk and having them correct my own talk. But I never heard anything about prepositions, or nouns, or pronouns, or verbs or adjectives and adverbs, and certainly none of that more exotic stuff, from either of my parents, so I do wonder why teachers need to use these words to teach grammar. Of course, some of these words [noun, verb, adjective, adverb, in particular] are a useful addition to anyone's vocabulary, but why are these words used so preemptively to teach grammar? I still don't get it. Don't kids learn by imitating the language of others, and being shown how to say it right when they say it wrong, rather than by learning rules? It seems to me, as an outsider, that these "rules" simply get in the way of learning.I accept that many children don't hear the best grammar at home, but doesn't that mean that these children should hear more proper english at school and less talk about "the rules"? * Actually, I do remember one thing I learned for the first time in a classroom. Never dangle a participle. And I must have learned that lesson pretty well, because I never do. Also, I know what a "participle" is**. It's not a very useful word, but I remember it anyway, without any particular resentment. Aside: Perhaps I should feel resentful because I hear that the "dangling participle rule" has been relaxed or withdrawn completely. Perhaps it has, perhaps not, but either way, it doesn't matter. I'll be a "prescriptivist" on this one, not as a matter of principle but instead as a matter of habit. *** Actually, I didn't know what a "dangling participle" was until I read the page linked below a minute ago. I thought a "dangling participle" was leaving a word like "of" at the end of a sentence. [Eg. "the disease he died of."] Seems I had it wrong. In any case, it seems to be less of a sin to "dangle a participle" today than it was in my schooldays, as this extract from "Dangling a Participle" suggests: "The agreement among speakers of English that the subject of a participle (which is the same as saying `what it modifies') should come close behind it makes perfect sense in keeping our statements free of ambiguities like (1) to (3). But here as everywhere else, being rigid and across-the-board about it gets us into the realm of pedantry. Look at these:
Speaking of John, he could work with us too.
Considering all the facts, this should be easy to resolve.
Knowing that, those plans had better be abandoned."http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/miniatures/dangling.htm
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re Don't kids learn by imitating the language of others, and being shown how to say it right when they say it wrong, rather than by learning rules?
I realize now that I have avoided dangling participles throughout my life, but it's not because I understood the rule against "dangling participles". Obviously, I didn't because I just learned the rule a few minutes ago. [In fact, I just learned what a "participle" is a few minutes ago ... and even now I'm not sure I know what it is.]
I have avoided dangling participles all my life because it just didn't sound right to dangle them.
Isn't this proof that people learn from listening to proper english being spoken, or by reading it, not from rules?
From my own experience, I am convinced this is true. Why wouldn't it be true for all children?
Maybe we could make more headway in grammar school without all the intimidating names for parts of speech and the like and all the intimidating, not to mention confusing, rules?
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Carpal Tunnel
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in any field, language, knitting, or auto mechanics, there are special terms, and 'languge' to explain the workings.
I know the 4 bacis parts of a cycle (in a gas combustion engine) Intake, compression, exploition, exhaust--(are these the correct term? maybe--or maybe just close enough.)
but if my career was based on improving engine performence, i would need to know these terms, and others, and understand them. i would use the specialize language of engineers. this language would actually help me convey ideas that others could understand.
Maybe we could make more headway in grammar school without all the intimidating names for parts of speech and the like and all the intimidating, not to mention confusing, rules?
Yes, most of use learn to speak reasonably good english by doing nothing more than listening to others speak.
but there are irregular verbs to be learned, and general rules..(word order rules) spelling rules, and so on. and not every child is blessed and born into a household with adult that speak proper english. and the children that grows up hearing errors, and having its basic errors uncorrected are at a disadvantage.
have you spend time around a 3 or 4 year old? they will tell you 'she goed'. they know the verb go. and they have figured out the rule adding ED to a verb makes it the past tense. But they don't yet know the rules for irregular verbs. so 'they goed' is their 'natural english'
i was so startled when as a teen, i was asked to 'congigate' the verb to be. i really had to think about it. i always used the verb correctly, but i hadn't realized (duh!) that
i am
you/ are
he/she/it is
we are
they are
i have been
you have been
i was, she was, he was
we are being
they were
etc..
were all the ROOT same verb. i never put it together.
learning these rules and details helps us(well me!) understand our language better.
it might be the dyslexics of the world need the rules more than others. certainly i spell better when words follow the rules (i before e, except after c..or when sounded as A as in neighboor and weight.) but i it took me years to remember how to spell friend- (no c, no A sound in the middle.. was it friend or freind? ) eventually i learned to remember not to fry the end of my friends but to always fri ends.
i have a 1000 or so of those silly nmemotics in my head. so i can mostly spell the 4000 or so commonest words i use.
perhaps, because language (written language)made sense to you right off the bat, you underappreciate the structure.
maybe understanding structure isn't important to you (or comes naturally to you!) and your experience, while it might be widely shared, is not the only way people experience language.
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Thanks for taking the time to explain and to share your insights, Of Troy. Your Dyslexia may make you a diamond in the rough at times, but you are a diamond all the same.
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Carpal Tunnel
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What a wonderful excursion into the experiential devotion of a teacher who every student would be blessed to have at their side. From hereon in, your reputation for talent and dedication precedes you, Wordwind! My niece is an elementary ed major at the University of Maryland...I'll make sure she sees this, if you don't mind.
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Carpal Tunnel
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True, the words but, concerning, considering do function in some sentences differently from prepositions.
I don't have a lot of time* and won't till probably Thursday, but I'll just say that, maybe you can shoehorn those words into the preposition cubbyhole but it's not something I'd do to poor, impressionable, young schoolkids.
*I haven't even had a chance to get caught up on this thread, so I apologize to any chopped liver I've left scattered about.
Addendum: I am reminded that a quick scan has indicated that there are a whole lot of posts in this thread that I won't have to read, so my catching up may not take so long.
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I apologize to any chopped liver I've left scattered aboutI'm the only "chopped liver" I know of on this thread, Faldage.
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Carpal Tunnel
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WW: applause, applause! Thank you for taking the time to share with us. Your students are indeed lucky to have you.
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Carpal Tunnel
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But is a whole nother issue, but I've had a chance to dig into the question of words such as concerning that were nicely established as participles until some well meaning but misguided prescriptivists decided to try to give them extreme makeovers. A glance at the AHD usage note on the word participle might be useful at this time. The note is at http://www.bartleby.com/61/74/P0087400.html, but I'll just quote this brief portion of it: A number of expressions originally derived from participles have become prepositions, and these may be used to introduce phrases that are not associated with the immediately adjacent noun phrase. Such expressions include concerning, considering, failing, granting, judging by, and speaking of. Thus one may write without fear of criticism Speaking of politics, the elections have been postponed or Considering the hour, it is surprising that he arrived at all. I have often said that it is easy to be a prescriptivist; just memorize a few rules and weep and wail and gnash teeth when presented with usages that don't follow them. Here we have a brave attempt by prescriptivists to actually describe the language, but their attempts fall short. They should leave the describing to the descriptivists. Realizing that the problem of the so-called dangling participles isn't going away they have picked a few instances of usage that may have become particularly well established and tried to cram them into some semblance of existing rules. The root of their problem is in such sentences as Turning the corner, the view was quite different. The prescriptivists call Turning the corner a dangling participle because the sentence has no noun or pronoun for the participle to modify. This is no different in grammar from the examples cited above with Speaking of politics and Considering the hour. Recasting the participles as prepositions is not the answer. The answer is recognizing the grammatical category known in other languages, notably Japanese, as the topic of the sentence. The topic may be identical to the subject but need not be. In the case of sentences with so-called dangling participles they are not identical. Regarding but, I'll withdraw my objections. A little research has shown that but has been both a conjunction and a prepostion since OE.
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journeyman
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In reply to:
i hadn't realized (duh!) that
i am
you/ are
he/she/it is
we are
they are
i have been
you have been
i was, she was, he was
we are being
they were
etc..
were all the ROOT same verb. i never put it together.
It's also interesting that the verb "to be" is irregular in nearly every language, primarily because it's so common in speech. It's a pain learning sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt, or eimi, ei, esti, esmen, este, and eisi - and it just recently struck me how equally annoying it must be for people learning English.
"It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years." -Tom Lehrer
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journeyman
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Here's my learning 'poem' for the forms of 'to be'...said with a certain rhythm:
'am are is was were
be been have has had
can could do did may
shall should will would might'
'Nother of those old memorization things from the early 50s, and still stuck in my oft forgetful head.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Just for S&Gs, let's assume, for sake of argument, that we have somehow magically converted these participles to prepositions. Let's take the sentence Considering the hour, it is surprising that he arrived at all.
Why is it bad to treat Considering the hour as a participial phrase? The standard answer is that it is a dangling participle, i.e., it is not modifying anything in the sentence. What do we gain by thinking of considering as a preposition? Not much; prepositional phrases need something to modify, too. We don't say things like: Into the house, I saw a cat. All we've done is change a dangling participle into a dangling preposition.
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Why is it bad to treat "Considering the hour" as a participial phrase?All things considered, I'm on your side on this one, Faldage. But, seriously, how does it advance the argument by even mentioning parts of speech [if that's what they are] such as "prepositions" or "participles"? Those terms may have some meaning for the initiated, but the initiated are already initiated. We need to get to the uninitiated -- the one's who are being left behind. Surely, every educator can agree about that. Let's approach this from a different angle -- the angle of "Common Sense Writing". Let's ask students without any comprehension of terms like "prepositions" or "participles", and certainly no affection for them, to judge particular examples by their sound. I would call this part of the lesson "sound judgment". Let's use your own examples, Faldage. 1. "Considering the hour, [we should wrap this up]", and 2. "Into the house, I saw a cat" My guess is that most kids in Grade 6 [or above] would tell you Example #1 sounds OK, and Example #2 doesn't make any sense -- even if they can't tell the difference between a dangling participle and a dangling fishing pole. Any kid who says OK to Example #1 and "Huh?" to Example #2, would get a pass in "Sound Judgment", and that's that. Any kid who thinks Example #2 makes sense, certainly needs help, but teaching them the meaning of "prepositions" and "participles" is like putting a kid who failed Grade 6 into Grade 10 to straighten them out. Anyone who has a taste for this type of esoterica, should write learned essays about it to the profession. But are children under the age of consent fitting subjects for this sort of thing?
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hell, plutarch, why teach the bulk of the kids to read to begin with? why not just plop them down in front of 'educational' tv and let them learn to be good consumers. (ie, buy what ever is being advertized) we can have tv shows instructing them how to look at pictures and work the cash registers at mcdonalds (which don't have dollar values, but picture icons so illiterate idiots can learn to work the cash register.)
i have made the point that knitting (Of all things!) helped me understand binary math and other numbering series, as well as giving me a huge insight into boolian logic.
lots of people scoff at knitting, (a nice hobby for old ladies, usless, but harmless--but then again, knitting needles were banned from airflights right after 9/11 so some thought knitting needles could be used as lethal weapons!) but knitting aside from teaching fine motor skills (good for learning to write) also teached a new way of thinking--ways of thinking i continue to use.
human beings always have insights and understanding based on their current knowledge.
3000 years ago, the egyptians thought the heart a useless organ...even as they 'understood' the lungs (the lungs were 'bellows' that flamed the 'fire' of human life. bellows they knew and understood.
understand of the function of the heart came with the industrial revolution.. as engineers understood pumps, they came to also understanding the pumping action of the heart--
the action of the heart didn't change.. but understanding the action arrived when there was external analogy that could be understood.
what is a measure of practical knowledge? You understand grammar, and you have mastered english and consider understanding part of speech and rules of grammer to be useless.
many disagree. maybe only 1 in 1000 kids truly benefits from the knowledge. SO WHAT? What is the goal? Are we interested in education or in giving children job training?
if the goal (of schools) is to give job training--sure we can dump grammer, 99% of the kids don't need it to be clerks in mcdonalds or wal-marts. but if our goal is education (even if 50% of the kids resist it, and end up in jobs like mcdonald or wal mart where they don't need it) then part of being educated is to understand the language we speak.
a few days ago, you were humbled and agreeing with Word wind, but now you are back to your original position.
for homework to night, reread the essay!
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