Latest annoyance: My students who are supposed to be ready for university level work not only consistantly fail to use both nouns and verbs in the same "sentence" (I use the term lightly here) but also, with equally dismaying consistancy, use except for accept, (rarely the other way round, though).
My favorite example of this error appeared on a restaurant’s billboard. "Reservations excepted."
It was okay, I hadn’t wanted to eat there anyway.
I hear your pain loud and clear. My students miss this one too, as well as simpler (to me) distinctions like wonder and wander. I have concluded that it is not because they don’t know or are incapable of learning, but that they do not care. >:(
[quote author=rosewoman link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=0#1 date=03/04/03 at 13:20:19]I have concluded that it is not because they don’t know or are incapable of learning, but that they do not care.
[quote author=KatyBr link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=0#3 date=03/04/03 at 13:45:59]
-TimWhat are the lower grade teachers teaching?
Katy
The same things we teach, year after year after year after year, I once had a boy in my Senior basic English class who was simulatneously enrolled in freshman, sophomore and junior English. How anyone thought he would graduate was beyond me.
Did anyone actually learn grammer in highschool? I can remember having mistakes corrected on my essays but never any lessons about them. I feel the same as Katy, I graduated from highschool and had to begin teaching myself (and I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of it, lol!)
[quote author=Tim Ward link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=0#2 date=03/04/03 at 13:22:26]
Rosewoman—sadly, I have to agree. :(
-Tim
TIM! :o
I have to look up those words almost every single time I use them (if I care and have the time). The students need to take the time to look them up, too. However, I am fairly certain I was in college before it finally dawned on me that they were 2 separate words. It is embarrassing to admit that, especially in this forum, but I wanted to speak in defense of those students. :-[ Tim and I have been married almost 11 years, and I still don’t think he completely appreciates how gifted he is and how challenging this sort of thing can be for those of us who always flunked out of the spelling bee in the first round. I don’t think I ever had a teacher who could appreciate the struggle I had with spelling, and I suspect I am not in a small minority! There are, literally, hundreds of words that if I want to spell them correctly I have to look them up every single time I use them. Back before spell checks, I had a paperback dictionary that just fell open to certain words because I looked them up so often. This was after years of improvements in my spelling that had enabled me to know which words I couldn’t spell so that I KNEW that I had to look them up!
I know that this is not a forum in which defending the intellectually or academically sloppy is popular. You are most likely correct in your assumption that some of your students simply do not care. But certainly there are others who, like me, when they write without benefit of a dictionary or a human editor, either appear careless, or write like Porky Pig… always searching for a more simplistic (and significantly less satisfying!!!) word that can be used AND spelled correctly! It is a royal PAIN and I hate it. My spelling has improved dramatically through my *association with Tim. He was my editor through college and graduate school. It was only his consistency and (usually) patience that has allowed me to make some slow progress. I wouldn’t want to do it if I were you, but some of your students will appreciate your editorial help. Although it might take a very long time for them to improve…
I am still stinging from some of the hysterical belly laughs that Tim did not even try to conceal over the spelling in papers I wrote. Although I was grateful that he found it entertaining. Otherwise, he might have refused to help.
That said, I have read some horrible papers written by students that left me slack jawed. I wouldn’t want to read a big stack of them. Even without regard for the spelling, the content would be mind numbing!
I have often dreamed of living in the days before dictionaries… :) If we did, Tim would set out to write one, though.
Hang in there. It isn’t always as simple as it seems.
There are, literally, hundreds of words that if I want to spell them correctly I have to look them up every single time I use them.
Well, I’ve been in the language business, one way or another, for over 30 years and I still can’t spell. Happily, there’s a gang of diligent editors nearby who get to read all my stuff before it leaves the building. :)
Actually, I’ve always regarded English spelling as being somewhat arbitrary. ;D
[quote author=Palewriter link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=0#9 date=03/31/03 at 23:13:27]
Actually, I’ve always regarded English spelling as being somewhat arbitrary. ;D
Oh, I completely agree that English spelling is (apparently) quite arbitrary. But to see certain mistakes over and over and over begins to annoy me. Moreover, I can tell which students are making lazy errors and which are making errors accidently and even which are having learning disability problems. An otherwise intelligent paper with a few spelling problems is far more forgivable than a paper written at nearly iliterate levels—with or without spelling errors.
Besides, ACcept does not sound anything like EXcept. Or at least it shouldn’t.
[quote author=AgDrgn link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=0#11 date=04/06/03 at 18:45:21]
Besides, ACcept does not sound anything like EXcept. Or at least it shouldn’t.
Patricia/AgDrgn
In NC many things sound like they shouldn’t! Tim laughs at me because pen and pin sound the same, pitcher and picture sound the same, and wolf and woof sound the same. Accept and except are homophones, too. He really gets tickled when I talk about howling woofs! :) Of course, then he laughs harder (and I do too) when I attempt to say it correctly… "Wullllluf".
Tim is from NC, too, (eastern NC!!)but he has risen above his raisin’, and can talk all high-falootin’.
pen and pin sound the same, pitcher and picture sound the same, and wolf and woof sound the same
Sounds like you’re from Texas. ;D Here in the Lonestar State, you take a pitcher of your loved one to keep in your wallet. You use a pin to write with. (Sorry, Henri, with which to write ;D).
Around these here parts, when you’ve been working a lot, you get "tarred". And "ornery" is the opposite of "special".
Delicious Texas self-irony, however, has my Texan mother-in-law say "aah bin wurkin so haard, ahm tarred and feathered".
[quote author=Palewriter link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=15#15 date=04/07/03 at 01:29:51]
Sounds like you’re from Texas. ;D Here in the Lonestar State, you take a pitcher of your loved one to keep in your wallet. You use a pin to write with. (Sorry, Henri, with which to write ;D).
Around these here parts, when you’ve been working a lot, you get "tarred". And "ornery" is the opposite of "special".
Delicious Texas self-irony, however, has my Texan mother-in-law say "aah bin wurkin so haard, ahm tarred and feathered".
Priceless.
- PW (rather tarred, gonna hit the sack)
Nope. I’m not from Texas, but I’ve been there once. I had a great-great-great uncle, the Reverend Oehler, who moved to TX about a 100 years ago. I’m from NC, but I don’t really sound like I am from NC. My family has been here a very long time, and before the great Yankee invasion (the recent one in the last 15 years) people used to ask me where I was from… I mean, from whence I hailed (don’t want anyone to say it was from behind the preposition). Now there really isn’t much of a local accent still recognizable. However, I can sometimes tell if someone is local, and even the town in which they grew up.
"Ornery" around here means "mean". When my kids are tired, they get ornery. They are still special. "Ordinary" is pronounce something like "ordinry".
Tim and I were trying to imagine an accent in which accept and except sound very different. All we could come up with would be a pronuncation that had a Boston a. If you say you "Packed" the car in the garage, with all the "a"s sounding like the word cat, then accept and except would sound very different. Also, if you stressed the first syllable instead of the second, they would sound different.
Now I’m thinking about accents. I know that I can usually tell a difference between various southern accents, but I’m not sure how. I’ll have to ask Tim. He loves accents! (Especially those in Minnesota… he giggles when we hear them on the Radio) I have noticed, though, that some people from TX sound more like North Carolinians to me than those folks from other southern states. I have asked a Texan, on more than one occassion, if s/he is from NC.
Of course, the easiest way to tell these words apart in everyday, informal usage is still to listen for the first syllable. If it’s dropped entirely in spoken language, then it’s except (e.g., ‘cep).
[quote author=Tim Ward link=board=spell;num=1046801306;start=15#17 date=04/22/03 at 09:34:52]Of course, the easiest way to tell these words apart in everyday, informal usage is still to listen for the first syllable. If it’s dropped entirely in spoken language, then it’s except (e.g., ‘cep).
;D
-Tim
True! If you accept that the speaker knows the difference.
