My experiences with grammar are not as bad as one might think, given the background on the education of my family as I was growing up. Neither my mother or father had finished High School, though my father did return to college to get a dgree in English the semester before I started college.
Only one of my uncle's was a High School graduate. None of my aunt's had finished. But I learned to speak well enough that by the time I got to any Language Arts classes, I didn't have any problems passing them. Now that is not to say that my parents were not learned because they were both incredibly intelligent and most of what I had learned up to that point had come from them.
In my Language Arts classes, my teacher's enthusiam did little to lull me out of my apathetic state of mind. I know how to read and write, and I'm also an excellent speaker so why do I have to learn what an adverb is and where in the sentence it is supposed to go? It's rubbish! or so I had thought.
My second oldest brother started college in the last semster before I got my Associate's in English. He was put into a basic grammar class and would frequently ask me to look over his paper as I was an English major and a member of Phi Theta Kappa (the English Honor Society). I would tell him things like "you need a comma here" and he would answer with "why?" A question to which, with my limited grammatical knowledge would prompltly answer "I don't know...because you do!" I knew I was right but I couldn't articulate why. Suddenly my 3.9 GPA felt, to me at least, like a big fat zero.
That was part of what made me decide to take a grammar class when I transferred to East Central University. Grammar seemed to be one area where the knowledge that I had, though sufficient, just wasn't enough to satisfy me. I didn't like the feeling of knowing where things go, but lacking the reason why.
So here I am, in a grammar class at ECU, actually looking forward to taking a class and learning about something I could not have cared less for only a year ago.
Though I do think grammar an important part of our language and writing skill, I do feel that at times it only works to cripple one's creativity. For example: in a poem I had written about a year ago, I had capitalized an entire word in the middle of the sentence. This was done purposely and meant to emphasize the word, but the professor asked that I correct it. But to the mind of this particular poet...it was correct.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I agree that sometimes grammar can be limiting, and I can certainly understand how frustrating it is when you want to make a stylistic choice and a teacher tells you it's wrong. I'm looking forward to learning the grammar rules so that when that happens, I can explain to the teacher that I know what he/she is talking about, but I want to do it my way.
Aaron, because time is limited and the needs of the students in this class are different, we may not be able to address all the questions you have this semester. But I encourage you to look for some of them on your own in Kolln/Funk textbook, Understanding English Grammar. It's an expensive textbook, but one of the reasons I decided to assign it in this course is that I thought it would be the kind of reference book that students might want to hold on to.
Post a Comment