Work on your vocabulary!

[Imogene]

Did the teacher forget that they were no longer teaching a third grade elementary school class?

*shrug* I don't really know. The best part? Seeing as we couldn't go over ten minutes, my using the word 'transformation' was to gloss over a massive, massive character thread that would have made the character seem more real... a mass of background information that would explain, basically, why she hates her life/humans... However, that story would've taken at the minimum three hours, to get all the side-tracks out of the way, all the little niggly details that would be massively important to make everything click.

[seigus]

I was reading some comments on an article online and saw that someone thought we shouldn't be caught up in "manusha". I nearly died.

[Pagan]

*shrug* I don't really know. The best part? Seeing as we couldn't go over ten minutes, my using the word 'transformation' was to gloss over a massive, massive character thread that would have made the character seem more real... a mass of background information that would explain, basically, why she hates her life/humans... However, that story would've taken at the minimum three hours, to get all the side-tracks out of the way, all the little niggly details that would be massively important to make everything click.

Nice.

I took Honors English 101 in college. Massive waste of time. All we did was read "Walden" (Which is where I got my hatred of Henry David Thoreau. The man writes in circles!) and keep a journal. Didn't do a lick of anything to do with English. There's even some grammar in French that I have no idea what the equivalent is in English.

We had to turn in our journals for her to read every now and then. I found out pretty quick that she wasn't actually reading them. She was....wait for it....weighing them. Realized that when she gave mine back with the comment, "It feels a little light." Sorry, but when I'm writing, particularly if it's for me, if I can use one word to replace 5, I will use it.

I also paraphrased "Hazy Shade of Winter" and she never noticed.

This is the same one that wouldn't give me any extra time to complete an assignment that was due and basically told me to "suck it up" when I asked on the Monday after the weekend that my father almost died (they weren't sure if he was going to live through the night at one point).

[telecom_goddess]

I'm a huge reader too, and could read by the time I was in first grade, having skipped kindergarten altogether . I still like to read and my favorites are biographies about famous people or autobiographies. I read all kinds of novels and stuff too. I can't understand how people DON'T want to read....

now I gotta ask...a second half cousin? does that even count as a relative anymore?

First double cousins and now this...oh my.

[Mishi]

I'd be glad not to be related to him, he doesn't even understand the concept of sarcasm. I thought that was the only language teenagers spoke, but obviously I'm wrong. My family has many, many branches and none of them have inter-married yet, thankfully.

The school wanted me to start year 3 partway through pre-school, but my parents were worried that it may stunt my social and emotional growth... and home-schooling won't?

[BookstoreEscapee]

there's a commercial that has a bunch of kids in a spelling bee, and 48 hours later or whatever no one's been disqualified. voice over says that with the internet, kids everywhere will be smarter.
...i'm guessing they've never been to chat rooms or seen twitter.

Stephen Colbert recently had the author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains on his show. [Interview here. Slate review here (which I haven't read yet; just found it while googling the book).] I used to read all the time but lately I have a hard time focusing and it takes me forever to read a book. I don't think it's just the internet, but I do spend more time on the computer than I would like, and have a hard time forcing myself to shut it off sometimes. (Though I am reading a lot online..but then I read blogs that link to other related/interesting articles/blogs/posts and it just never ends...you should see my "reading now" bookmark folder .)

I drove my 7th grade language arts students crazy with one phrase "go look it up". Any time they'd ask me what a word meant, I'd point to the dictionaries and say "go look it up." I figured if they actually had to go through the effort to look it up, it might stick.

My problem with looking stuff up in the dictionary is that I always get sidetracked by other words as I'm trying to find the right page.

I drove one of my 6th grade teachers nuts, though. We'd have to write down a little synopsis of whatever book we were reading. Well, I'd be reading two or three books at once. Even though I had no problem keeping the stories straight, he was still very concerned about my reading and spoke to my parents about it at an open house. All we could ever figure out that his "concern" was was that he couldn't do the same thing.

When I was in 11th grade I took Psychology, and one of our assignments was to read our choice of one of 5 books. We had two weeks to read it and then we had a 4-essay-question test on it. I chose one of the shorter options (not for that reason) and started reading it in class the day he handed out the books. I was finishing it up at the beginning of class the next day. That night I discovered that my parents had a copy of Sybil, which was one of the other options (and the thickest) in the basement, and I started reading that. My teacher saw me reading it in class and asked me about it; I told him I found it in my basement so I started reading it. He said if I finished it in time (I did, before the end of the first week) I could take either test I wanted. (I later checked out one of the other options from the library as well.)

I was reading some comments on an article online and saw that someone thought we shouldn't be caught up in "manusha". I nearly died.

It took me a second to figure out what word that was supposed to be.

I've been reading a thread on ABC News (religion threads on there can be quite entertaining, in a head-desky sort of way...this one is about people being debaptised with a hair dryer) and one poster referred several times to "batism" and "Batists"...the word "baptism" was even used more than once in the article he was commenting on, including the title. I even reread his post to see if there were other words with 'p' in them, thinking maybe his keyboard was broken.

[telecom_goddess]

Ohhhh I read Sybil. Great book. That's the kind of thing I like to read

And debaptised with a hair dryer...........next there will be reverse exorcisms.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Ohhhh I read Sybil. Great book. That's the kind of thing I like to read

And debaptised with a hair dryer...........next there will be reverse exorcisms.

Boggles the mind how many people in the comments didn't get that it's a joke.

[Seshat]

Drives me nuts when, instead of oh, you know, actually learning a few words, people start making them up!

My family sometimes makes up words - but it's for fun, and we know the actual word. (and how to spell it and use it.)


Prezactly (exactly) is one of our longest-standing. It's fun to say.

[Eisa]

I learned how to read when I was 4 and read The Grapes of Wrath in 4th grade. My vocabulary was quite extensive. The only problem I've had with it is that sometimes I can't pronounce words correctly, as I've only seen them in print.

My 9th grade English teacher once wrote that my vocabulary was preternatural and ended up moving me into Honors. Why? Because I used the word "preternatural!" Er...I was 14, it can't be that unknown? All my English teachers in high school were amazed at my vocabulary, it was kind of sad. In AP Literature, we had vocab quizzes every week to prepare us for the test. I knew every single word every week. It was kind of funny.

[BookstoreEscapee]

My family sometimes makes up words - but it's for fun, and we know the actual word. (and how to spell it and use it.)


Prezactly (exactly) is one of our longest-standing. It's fun to say.

I had a friend who did that in college. Not that she didn't know the words, she was just kind of a spaz. (In a good way.) I think our favorite was "effectful."

[Pagan]

I had a friend who did that in college. Not that she didn't know the words, she was just kind of a spaz. (In a good way.) I think our favorite was "effectful."

I say "flutterby" instead of "butterfly". Kind of makes more sense anyway, since they do flutter by!

And I still have a tendency to say "pasghetti". Had that problem since I was little.

[paxillated]

Oh my, yes. The schools these days... Not to mention that it's "cool" to sound stupid - and arrogant. I've given up. I no longer try to "dumb down" my language. Let them ask, or look it up, or stay down there among limited.

I can't remember my source, but there is research showing that kids will learn to read faster if you leave "closed captioning" on all the time. I guess it takes the place of having parents read to their children. Some English-speaking movies have subtitles in English.

But I think it's far better to read to them yourselves.