when students know best

[silvia_elisa]

I feel the need to rant about yesterday's lecture because... well, because it was just rubbish from start to finish and... nnnnnnghh! It makes me want to scream. But I won't. Because I don't live in the middle of nowhere anymore. Yeah

Comments

[zeegeek]

UGGHHH!!! I hate professors like that. The worst was when I was in HS, I had this teacher in my grade 11 English class, and well he didn't quite seem qualified to be teaching that class (or any class for that matter). So like on the final exam, or maybe it was the midterm, whatever, a big test, he made mistakes on his grading key. It was mostly multiple guess type questions, and not only did he accidentally mark his key wrong in a few places, he actually was wrong on the information on a few too. As in, it took us pointing out in the book where he was wrong before he would believe us. Anyway, like on a 50 question test, he had goofed on like 1/5th of the questions. I got halfway through my corrections of his grading mistakes before he stopped me saying "no more - I've already given you enough 'free' points". FREE POINTS? WTF? They aren't free points, they are your frigg'n mistakes

[silvia_elisa]

Free points! I had your exact reaction just by reading that! Grrrr... And you had to go to the dean! Honestly!

I'll stop with the exclamation points. :)

It makes me feel better that he's not a professor, yet. By the sounds of it, he's either studying to be one (oh joy) or he's still a PhD student and they're letting him practice on us (no comment). AND I didn't say anything about the spelling mistakes in more than half of his slides! Both on Monday and two weeks ago!

I need a voodoo doll. *sighs* My lecturer on How To Read Fiction is a novelist, and that's today, let's hope I don't have to start quoting from How Not To Write A Novel. (So far, I haven't)

AND THANK YOU! ^_^

[marmaladefever]

Okay, your teacher is either crazy or completely misheard you!

But... is it wrong that I wish I could have participated? I'd probably have been answering all of them, including that dangling modifier, and then maybe even correcting him. ;)

[silvia_elisa]

Yes, thank you, I'll go with the crazy. Half the class heard me, what is he? Deaf? Dumb as a doornail?

You would have the death of him! I wanted to get up, get on the internet and show him how real writers write, with a flourish I would have proclaimed: 'If Marm says it's right, IT'S RIGHT!'

[marmaladefever]

lol :P

The funny thing about grammar, though, is that there are a lot of loopholes to all the so-called rules. The Oxford comma, for example, is used differently between countries and can vary by profession. You end up hearing so many different things, it's hard to call anything definitively correct.

[silvia_elisa]

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly; as that also implies that it's a matter of choice which rules to follow, it's the 'take my word as Gospel' part of the lecture that I didn't appreciate. I think the tricky thing about grammar is that you can teach it well, if you want to.

Clearly, he missed that class.

My example is, would you say 'James' car' or 'James's car'? Care to guess what he said?

[lara_everlong]

hehe, you said rubbish, you're turning British :)

[silvia_elisa]

Tut, tut, what the dickens! :D

(at least I don't eat porridge for breakfast... bleah)