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Re: Act versus pass (WAS Disp versus App-Which One? ) (slightly OT/rant)
Subject:Re: Act versus pass (WAS Disp versus App-Which One? ) (slightly OT/rant) From:Jo Francis Byrd <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:09:37 -0600
For some reason I managed to get through grade school and most of high school
without having a grasp of grammar. I could (and did) speak and write correct
English, but I couldn't tell you one part of speech from another, or tell you
WHY it was correct (or incorrect), just knew it was. I vividly remember asking
my 7th grade teacher what this first, second, third person singular, plural,
meant. I also remember not getting an answer.
I took two years of French in high school to fulfill my language requirement.
Back "then" that meant learning the grammar. And it was only after studying
French grammar for over a year that English grammar clicked in my head, that I
understood what "first person, singular," for example, meant.
So, yes, grammar IS important for understanding a language!
Jo Byrd
Barbara Yanez wrote:
> <snip>
> I worked at community colleges (as prof, prog coordinator, and director) in
> which grammar had become a dirty word among instructors. Students taught at
> such colleges left courses speaking a pidginized, broken form of the language.
> Moreover, they would 'fossilize' on this form of the language- get 'stuck'
> there-and not know why. It was, in my opinion, the inattention to the
> importance of form and structure.
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