well... that sucks
My store is closing. I should have a job until the end of April. I will have one year left in school at that point, and one summer before I start teaching, so ... say fifteen months. I need to find a job I can handle for fifteen months. One that will work around my school schedule and still leave me time for the things I'm pursuing on my own - I do pretty well at about 20 to 25 hours a week, and I don't think that's an unreasonable amount to be looking at for a part-time job. A couple of my coworkers work at Whole Foods, so I may poke my nose over there. I could handle being a cashier three or four days a week...I think.
I also need to go ahead and set aside a certain amount of money to buy, um, everything in our store that looks interesting. Liquidators are coming in next week, my manager said, to start assessing what's getting sent to other stores and what's being held and marked down. I will be building a stash and hiding it until the last possible moment. Astronomy books at 90% off, here I come.
In happier goofier news, I am very upset at my Introduction to Composition Studies textbook. For Tuesday, we read the chapter on Grammar and Usage. And this chapter had some perfectly valid ideas, including that teaching purely repetitive grammar workbook exercises does not instill good grammar in people - in practical terms, students' writing doesn't improve from grammar exercises. It improves from reading and exposure to the language. And I very much agree with that. But the author of this chapter went way too far to the other extreme, in his wording if not in his ideas. And that bothers me. Below the quote, find the most rage-inducing quotes and my commentary. (My commentary, incidentally, is full of profanity. Just a heads-up.)
"The biggest myth about writing is that it is linked somehow to grammar" (313)
Uh, excuse me? Writing is *absolutely* linked to grammar; it is SHAPED by grammar, for fuck's sake. (This was the FIRST SENTENCE OF THE CHAPTER. I called a halt to the conversations and video games going on in my living room, read it aloud, and began ranting. It took Kevin and Rob a glass and a half of wine to calm me down enough to read the second sentence.)
"Despite all the concern and attention devoted to it, grammar has not had any positive effect on writing performance" (314)
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS FUCKING BOOK. (After I finished the chapter, I realized what was going on: the author was using "grammar" to mean "repetitive grammar exercises removed from context or practical implementation." But THAT IS NOT WHAT THAT WORD MEANS. WORDS MEAN THINGS, HOOR.
"Perhaps more revealing is that the writing of the 75% who are not capable of producing such an essay is, among other things, riddled with the sort of errors that grammar instruction is supposed to eliminate" (314)
HOW IS THE OBVIOUS RESPONSE NOT "OUR GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION IS NOT BEING DONE PROPERLY", INSTEAD OF "WE MUST NOT NEED ANY". (I know there's not a lot of context for that quote, but I'm ... too lazy to type it up, since y'all will probably not care anyway :P)
*This chapter is currently acting as if the studies and the conclusions drawn from them can only be refuted by whining that the studies were unfair.
"Indicate the extent to which you “believe” that students “should” learn grammar, despite the results of studies demonstrating that it has no effect on writing improvement" (317)
I believe that students should learn grammar (and punctuation!) so that I don't have to read sentences with quotation marks sprinkled arbitrarily through them, asshole.
"The problem was, is, and forever will be that English is based on German, not Latin" (318)
Finally, something with which I agree. (I know this one isn't as amusing because I'm not yelling, but it was a good and important point, and I didn't realize how few people know this until my classmates started being all surprised at it.)
"...issues of usage generally do not have any connection with issues of grammar....Asking students to study
the parts of speech cannot have any effect on their ability to spell or use words correctly. These skills are developed through reading and writing" (320)
.....HOW RETARDED ARE YOU. OF COURSE THEY'RE DEVELOPED THROUGH READING AND WRITING - WRITING *WELL*. AND USAGE IS DEFINITELY CONNECTED TO GRAMMAR, SINCE GRAMMAR IS THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. WHAT. THE FUCK. DO YOU THINK THIS WORD MEANS?
....Following a paragraph about how most "grammar errors" are actually really usage errors that further exposure to written English (by reading a lot) will fix even though grammar instruction won't, "The writing of the fifth above grader [...]" (321). Do you know what this is? This is AWESOME VINDICATION.
*Also, a note: the surveys this chapter was bragging on earlier demonstrated that there is no difference in students' writing whether they've been taught grammar or been allowed to read popular fiction. If the conclusion is that teaching grammar is thus useless, then reading must be, too.
"Unfortunately, many black and Hispanic students have little motivation to master Standard English, for a wide variety of social reasons rooted in lack of socioeconomic opportunity, discrimination, and injustice" (328)
Right, none of those reasons have anything to do with laziness or anything like that. It's *always* social injustice. I'm not saying there is no social injustice or that there is no racism in the educational system, but there are also LAZY MINORITIES (and lazy majorities, too, but this sentence isn't about those us).
"It also is important to understand that grammar is related to the structure of language, not its production" (332)
It is right and true to say that creativity itself is not inherently bound to grammar. To say that the production of language, however, has nothing to do with grammar, is asinine and blatantly wrong. Grammar is the structure of language. So ... yeah. Don't be a moron.
Also, I started running again on Monday, and I went today too, and I feel very, very pleased with myself. And with the weather, as it's in the mid to high 60s and sunny and breezy :D
I also need to go ahead and set aside a certain amount of money to buy, um, everything in our store that looks interesting. Liquidators are coming in next week, my manager said, to start assessing what's getting sent to other stores and what's being held and marked down. I will be building a stash and hiding it until the last possible moment. Astronomy books at 90% off, here I come.
In happier goofier news, I am very upset at my Introduction to Composition Studies textbook. For Tuesday, we read the chapter on Grammar and Usage. And this chapter had some perfectly valid ideas, including that teaching purely repetitive grammar workbook exercises does not instill good grammar in people - in practical terms, students' writing doesn't improve from grammar exercises. It improves from reading and exposure to the language. And I very much agree with that. But the author of this chapter went way too far to the other extreme, in his wording if not in his ideas. And that bothers me. Below the quote, find the most rage-inducing quotes and my commentary. (My commentary, incidentally, is full of profanity. Just a heads-up.)
"The biggest myth about writing is that it is linked somehow to grammar" (313)
Uh, excuse me? Writing is *absolutely* linked to grammar; it is SHAPED by grammar, for fuck's sake. (This was the FIRST SENTENCE OF THE CHAPTER. I called a halt to the conversations and video games going on in my living room, read it aloud, and began ranting. It took Kevin and Rob a glass and a half of wine to calm me down enough to read the second sentence.)
"Despite all the concern and attention devoted to it, grammar has not had any positive effect on writing performance" (314)
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS FUCKING BOOK. (After I finished the chapter, I realized what was going on: the author was using "grammar" to mean "repetitive grammar exercises removed from context or practical implementation." But THAT IS NOT WHAT THAT WORD MEANS. WORDS MEAN THINGS, HOOR.
"Perhaps more revealing is that the writing of the 75% who are not capable of producing such an essay is, among other things, riddled with the sort of errors that grammar instruction is supposed to eliminate" (314)
HOW IS THE OBVIOUS RESPONSE NOT "OUR GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION IS NOT BEING DONE PROPERLY", INSTEAD OF "WE MUST NOT NEED ANY". (I know there's not a lot of context for that quote, but I'm ... too lazy to type it up, since y'all will probably not care anyway :P)
*This chapter is currently acting as if the studies and the conclusions drawn from them can only be refuted by whining that the studies were unfair.
"Indicate the extent to which you “believe” that students “should” learn grammar, despite the results of studies demonstrating that it has no effect on writing improvement" (317)
I believe that students should learn grammar (and punctuation!) so that I don't have to read sentences with quotation marks sprinkled arbitrarily through them, asshole.
"The problem was, is, and forever will be that English is based on German, not Latin" (318)
Finally, something with which I agree. (I know this one isn't as amusing because I'm not yelling, but it was a good and important point, and I didn't realize how few people know this until my classmates started being all surprised at it.)
"...issues of usage generally do not have any connection with issues of grammar....Asking students to study
the parts of speech cannot have any effect on their ability to spell or use words correctly. These skills are developed through reading and writing" (320)
.....HOW RETARDED ARE YOU. OF COURSE THEY'RE DEVELOPED THROUGH READING AND WRITING - WRITING *WELL*. AND USAGE IS DEFINITELY CONNECTED TO GRAMMAR, SINCE GRAMMAR IS THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE. WHAT. THE FUCK. DO YOU THINK THIS WORD MEANS?
....Following a paragraph about how most "grammar errors" are actually really usage errors that further exposure to written English (by reading a lot) will fix even though grammar instruction won't, "The writing of the fifth above grader [...]" (321). Do you know what this is? This is AWESOME VINDICATION.
*Also, a note: the surveys this chapter was bragging on earlier demonstrated that there is no difference in students' writing whether they've been taught grammar or been allowed to read popular fiction. If the conclusion is that teaching grammar is thus useless, then reading must be, too.
"Unfortunately, many black and Hispanic students have little motivation to master Standard English, for a wide variety of social reasons rooted in lack of socioeconomic opportunity, discrimination, and injustice" (328)
Right, none of those reasons have anything to do with laziness or anything like that. It's *always* social injustice. I'm not saying there is no social injustice or that there is no racism in the educational system, but there are also LAZY MINORITIES (and lazy majorities, too, but this sentence isn't about those us).
"It also is important to understand that grammar is related to the structure of language, not its production" (332)
It is right and true to say that creativity itself is not inherently bound to grammar. To say that the production of language, however, has nothing to do with grammar, is asinine and blatantly wrong. Grammar is the structure of language. So ... yeah. Don't be a moron.
Also, I started running again on Monday, and I went today too, and I feel very, very pleased with myself. And with the weather, as it's in the mid to high 60s and sunny and breezy :D