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school was never about learning or getting a good education. if you want a real education, i'd recommend dropping out. the real world is a far better teacher.
nobody really cares if you can properly understand literature (lol whatever that is), or write about it eloquently. nobody. and you dont need to write a ton of papers or read shit to think critically about things either. that is just a lie told to you so you would do your work.
if i were a teacher id probably give out all a's to my students, whether they showed up or not. what does giving them a c or failing them do for anybody? i could guarantee i got more out of classes ive failed than students who got a's in them, so it is obviously not about learning.
its cool you get to write about what you want to. i just wrote a 22 page paper on the prompt ''why do you believe what you believe''. it was the best and easiest thing ive ever written, because i actually got to explore something. fuck writing about what the white whale symbolizes, like i give a fuck.
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Sounds like she's an awesome person, and someone who would make a great friend.
Terrible teacher, though.
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Can we really say that Paradise Lost is sympathetic to Satan, by virtue that he is given all of the good parts like Blake says, when a common sentiment among 17th century poets was that they needed to get away from this eloquent language, and get away from poetry in order to get closer to God? I mean when we look at Herbert we see him turning away from poetry so that he can get intimate with God, and we can see Marvell turning away from human kind and trying to create some kind of post-human space within his poems, and shouldn't we then look the same way towards Milton-- that this expressive and eloquent language that Satan gets is not so we can look towards him with sympathy or whatever but more that as we begin to cast away language and poetry we get closer and closer to divinity? When Milton wants to end Paradise Lost with a sort of hoping look towards the future, when he returns to regularity in his lines rather than his radical caesura placement or his expressive substitutions, couldn't it be said that he is looking towards a future where we can get away from poetry and away from language so that we can eventually return to this intimate space with God?
The importance of teaching literature in schools is that it helps teach you how to think critically and analytically. A good way to think about literature is that a bridge and a brilliant sonnet are alike in that they are both masterfully constructed and well engineered but different in that a bridge is actually useful to society. You will never be able to rocket into outer space or cure polio with a poem no matter how good it is-- but it gives us something to do until the hearse gets here.
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Never mind, I'm getting involved with this topic.
On December 21 2010 16:20 Comeh wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 15:59 bbq ftw wrote:However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system. What your saying is right, but I think you're conflating the inability to understand literature with the technical inability to write correctly (proper grammar, essay structure, etc.). The two, while correlated, are not directly linked. However, teachers in high school definitely do not teach us how to write essays properly. Pretty much stick with the 5 paragraph structure until you finish high school. Then, first day of college "yeah forget all that bullshit they tought you. That was just to make it easier to grade".
ffdestiny, your passive employment of "reverberate" as a verb is awkward if not entirely wrong (and this comes from someone who has no ill will towards the passive construction). What you mean is that college professors iterate and reiterate that students entering higher education from the public education system are often painfully dumb with regards to structuring their arguments and even composing a sentence on mechanical, syntactic, and prosaic levels. The fact that many students drool their way through literary analysis and seem to care so little only exacerbates the problem, but by that point the student is as comfortable receiving a C+ as the professor is in giving it.
The five paragraph essay structure is a function of laziness for the professor as well as the student. The professor, be they at the college or high school level, often loses their hope or interest in their students' brightness after approximately five years and wing their lectures from then on, the lectures being obligations for the prof but institutional foreplay in comparison to the school's publishing demands.
At a high school level, even if you're lucky enough to have a teacher who has even a modicum of investment in literature or poetry, these teachers often realize that a small fraction of their class (if they're lucky) give half a fuck. Because this teacher can't logically fail every student who doesn't care, who can't read, who can't write, and who won't improve, especially if these students are interested in college- or University-level education, the teacher often sighs and gives out ad-hoc decent marks. If they didn't, the teacher's life would get substantially worse (because if all the students fail, it's assumed that the teacher is to blame, and if the teacher comes across like a hard-ass, then the students will check out more than they already have).
Look, guys, literature is fundamentally about what it means to be a fucking human being. For any piece of poetry or any one story, short or novel-length, let alone a whole corpus of both, there are not only the author's intended meanings - responses to environmental and cultural assumptions and conditions themselves formed from other pieces of literature - but there are assumed meanings that figure into situation of the message within that literary work. All literature finds itself at the crossroads of numerous ideological, historical, and theoretical locations, finds itself involved in the politics of representation, finds itself fucking shaping the language by using it, consciously or un-, and the importance of reading literature involves the engagement of modalities beyond your immediate perception and then the understanding of how these new modalities interact with other modalities.
To claim that historical and scientific texts provide the capital-T Truth is extreme positivism, if not outright sophism, and there exist infinitely more spacious accounts outside the deleterious restrictions of historiography (high school e.g. Slaughterhouse-Five) and natural science (high school e.g. Brave New World's invocation of science's general lack of an ethical dimension). Whether or not human perception has differed in over two millennia (like why Francis Bacon characterizes the Earth as a female that must be dominated or how history is composed and subject to human interference) is an argument that itself necessitates the reading and rereading of numerous texts, many of them literature.
Literature is not about learning proper grammar (although a poor grasp of proper grammar, usage, or argumentation is inexcusable in collegiate literary analysis) and is definitely not about manipulating people through stylish, specious arguments (although the more one reads and writes, the better their style and grasp on tone in language gets, but I'm told this is something difficult to teach and learn, especially to someone who doesn't want to read at all). Literature is also definitely, definitely, definitely not about 'appearing smart'; I am almost embarrassed that people think this and that the consequent assumption is that anyone who reads is putting on a facade.
In sum, someone took a horrible yet standard course in World Literature (which is a shame, because nowhere else will one get a better chance to explore the power and complexity of novels and poetry), and the world is worse off for it.
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+1 to everything jon arbuckle said. I was lucky to have a school with an amazing English program, we abandoned the stupid Shaffer method by junior year, and those subjects were always my favorite classes.
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If my professors did that, I would feel cheated of all the money I paid to go to school.
I'd prefer it to be the hard way, which makes things easier later on.
Edit: Saw you were in high school. Well, good luck having that same privilege in college. And if you so happen to go to a college or have a professor like that, I would suggest transferring or dropping the class ASAP.
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On December 21 2010 12:43 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 12:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On December 21 2010 12:32 synapse wrote:On December 21 2010 12:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On December 21 2010 12:18 synapse wrote:On December 21 2010 12:15 sc2lime wrote:
I feel like anyone can be that nice but the way I see it is that your teacher isn't doing you a favor by letting you not achieve your full potential to get you ready for further education. The way I see it, she is getting away easy by not doing enough efforts to get you to learn and you ruining your chances of education.
/pessimist High school isn't education. Literature classes have always been bullshit, I've never learned a thing from them - not even essay writing. Then you didn't go to a good high school. This is in response to the original post too. Teenagers love teachers who are pushovers because kids don't actually want to do any work. They don't recognize the importance of getting a good education (and apparently your teacher doesn't care enough about giving a good education); they'd much rather just fool around. Saying that you're happy that your teacher doesn't actually make you do anything just shows how immature you are. And honestly, I don't blame you; your teacher should be holding you responsible for this material. Students are too young to care. Surely you have some teachers that properly educate you though? (And hopefully you don't completely despise them for not letting you dick around in class or drop any Fs you guys get on quizzes?) Quote from Wiki: The Bergen County Academies (sometimes referred to as Bergen Academy or BCA) is a magnet public high school located in Hackensack that serves the high school population of Bergen County, New Jersey.[2] The school was conceived by the late Dr. John Grieco. The current principal is Russell Davis; Raymond Bath is the Academic Dean; Dr. David Ostfeld is Admissions Chair. [3] The Academy is recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the best high schools in the United States.[4] Newsweek considers Bergen County Academies to be an "elite" high school,[5] while Bloomberg Businessweek cites Bergen County Academies as New Jersey's best high school.[6] I've learned far more in math and the natural sciences through my own reading / studying than my school classes. My history classes have never taught me anything I didn't already know (my dad is a historian, so yeah). As for Lit - I really despise the whole "literary analysis." Maybe if the literature curriculum involved learning to write with style / eloquence rather than reading old classics and answering questions, I would pay a bit of attention. Not that I have anything against reading good books, I just don't see how literary analysis has any part in a non-english-major curriculum. You quoting an article about the general success of your high school obviously doesn't properly represent the class you're particularly speaking about. (You also just said that your high school is good but you can learn everything better on your own >.>) We're talking about you not having a good English class and a good English teacher. You need one that doesn't let you walk all over her. Or else of course you're not going to take the class seriously and not learn anything. You're not learning from that class because you're not expected to... because your teacher lets you get away with anything you want. I am not saying that my high school is "good" by my own standards, but rather by others' perception of high schools in general. But yes, my current lit teacher indeed does not teach us anything. My point, though, is that literature classes have never taught me anything. What am I supposed to gain through analyzing poetry or reading a book and remembering the plotline? Please, enlighten me.
I think you should print out this quote and come back to look it in about five years and you can laugh at how immature you were
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My English teacher in my senior/junior year of high school was awesome because after class we would go back to his car and smoke weed.
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On December 21 2010 17:34 jon arbuckle wrote:Never mind, I'm getting involved with this topic. Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 16:20 Comeh wrote:On December 21 2010 15:59 bbq ftw wrote:However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system. What your saying is right, but I think you're conflating the inability to understand literature with the technical inability to write correctly (proper grammar, essay structure, etc.). The two, while correlated, are not directly linked. However, teachers in high school definitely do not teach us how to write essays properly. Pretty much stick with the 5 paragraph structure until you finish high school. Then, first day of college "yeah forget all that bullshit they tought you. That was just to make it easier to grade". ffdestiny, your passive employment of "reverberate" as a verb is awkward if not entirely wrong (and this comes from someone who has no ill will towards the passive construction). What you mean is that college professors iterate and reiterate that students entering higher education from the public education system are often painfully dumb with regards to structuring their arguments and even composing a sentence on mechanical, syntactic, and prosaic levels. The fact that many students drool their way through literary analysis and seem to care so little only exacerbates the problem, but by that point the student is as comfortable receiving a C+ as the professor is in giving it. The five paragraph essay structure is a function of laziness for the professor as well as the student. The professor, be they at the college or high school level, often loses their hope or interest in their students' brightness after approximately five years and wing their lectures from then on, the lectures being obligations for the prof but institutional foreplay in comparison to the school's publishing demands. At a high school level, even if you're lucky enough to have a teacher who has even a modicum of investment in literature or poetry, these teachers often realize that a small fraction of their class (if they're lucky) give half a fuck. Because this teacher can't logically fail every student who doesn't care, who can't read, who can't write, and who won't improve, especially if these students are interested in college- or University-level education, the teacher often sighs and gives out ad-hoc decent marks. If they didn't, the teacher's life would get substantially worse (because if all the students fail, it's assumed that the teacher is to blame, and if the teacher comes across like a hard-ass, then the students will check out more than they already have). Look, guys, literature is fundamentally about what it means to be a fucking human being. For any piece of poetry or any one story, short or novel-length, let alone a whole corpus of both, there are not only the author's intended meanings - responses to environmental and cultural assumptions and conditions themselves formed from other pieces of literature - but there are assumed meanings that figure into situation of the message within that literary work. All literature finds itself at the crossroads of numerous ideological, historical, and theoretical locations, finds itself involved in the politics of representation, finds itself fucking shaping the language by using it, consciously or un-, and the importance of reading literature involves the engagement of modalities beyond your immediate perception and then the understanding of how these new modalities interact with other modalities. To claim that historical and scientific texts provide the capital-T Truth is extreme positivism, if not outright sophism, and there exist infinitely more spacious accounts outside the deleterious restrictions of historiography (high school e.g. Slaughterhouse-Five) and natural science (high school e.g. Brave New World's invocation of science's general lack of an ethical dimension). Whether or not human perception has differed in over two millennia (like why Francis Bacon characterizes the Earth as a female that must be dominated or how history is composed and subject to human interference) is an argument that itself necessitates the reading and rereading of numerous texts, many of them literature. Literature is not about learning proper grammar (although a poor grasp of proper grammar, usage, or argumentation is inexcusable in collegiate literary analysis) and is definitely not about manipulating people through stylish, specious arguments (although the more one reads and writes, the better their style and grasp on tone in language gets, but I'm told this is something difficult to teach and learn, especially to someone who doesn't want to read at all). Literature is also definitely, definitely, definitely not about 'appearing smart'; I am almost embarrassed that people think this and that the consequent assumption is that anyone who reads is putting on a facade. In sum, someone took a horrible yet standard course in World Literature (which is a shame, because nowhere else will one get a better chance to explore the power and complexity of novels and poetry), and the world is worse off for it.
I agree with mostly everything here (well written as well). However, literature is about finding the correct grasp of grammar usage; in fact, read enough Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or George Eliot, and you'll be inundated with so much remarkable grammar use, you'll never know how to get out of it and go back to the bad habits.
And yes reading does make you smart; in fact, I would go along with your argument about high school and make those damned kids actually invest time into reading and transferring what they learned into words, instead of the obtuse five-paragraph structure.
Also, from the Oxford English Dictionary:
reverberate, v.
"intr. Of sound: to resound, re-echo. Also fig.: (of reputation, news, etc.) to be much mentioned or repeated; (also) to have consequential effects."
Ex 1. 1872 W. Black Strange Adventures Phaeton xvii. 236 "The roar of the stream reverberating through the woods."
Ex 2. 1958 W. S. Churchill Hist. Eng.-speaking Peoples IV. x. iii. 47 "Cobden and Bright's thundering speeches against the landed classes reverberated through the nation."
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I thought this thread was going to be about a illict teacher/student relationship. Excuse me.
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On December 21 2010 23:16 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 12:43 synapse wrote:On December 21 2010 12:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On December 21 2010 12:32 synapse wrote:On December 21 2010 12:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On December 21 2010 12:18 synapse wrote:On December 21 2010 12:15 sc2lime wrote:
I feel like anyone can be that nice but the way I see it is that your teacher isn't doing you a favor by letting you not achieve your full potential to get you ready for further education. The way I see it, she is getting away easy by not doing enough efforts to get you to learn and you ruining your chances of education.
/pessimist High school isn't education. Literature classes have always been bullshit, I've never learned a thing from them - not even essay writing. Then you didn't go to a good high school. This is in response to the original post too. Teenagers love teachers who are pushovers because kids don't actually want to do any work. They don't recognize the importance of getting a good education (and apparently your teacher doesn't care enough about giving a good education); they'd much rather just fool around. Saying that you're happy that your teacher doesn't actually make you do anything just shows how immature you are. And honestly, I don't blame you; your teacher should be holding you responsible for this material. Students are too young to care. Surely you have some teachers that properly educate you though? (And hopefully you don't completely despise them for not letting you dick around in class or drop any Fs you guys get on quizzes?) Quote from Wiki: The Bergen County Academies (sometimes referred to as Bergen Academy or BCA) is a magnet public high school located in Hackensack that serves the high school population of Bergen County, New Jersey.[2] The school was conceived by the late Dr. John Grieco. The current principal is Russell Davis; Raymond Bath is the Academic Dean; Dr. David Ostfeld is Admissions Chair. [3] The Academy is recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the best high schools in the United States.[4] Newsweek considers Bergen County Academies to be an "elite" high school,[5] while Bloomberg Businessweek cites Bergen County Academies as New Jersey's best high school.[6] I've learned far more in math and the natural sciences through my own reading / studying than my school classes. My history classes have never taught me anything I didn't already know (my dad is a historian, so yeah). As for Lit - I really despise the whole "literary analysis." Maybe if the literature curriculum involved learning to write with style / eloquence rather than reading old classics and answering questions, I would pay a bit of attention. Not that I have anything against reading good books, I just don't see how literary analysis has any part in a non-english-major curriculum. You quoting an article about the general success of your high school obviously doesn't properly represent the class you're particularly speaking about. (You also just said that your high school is good but you can learn everything better on your own >.>) We're talking about you not having a good English class and a good English teacher. You need one that doesn't let you walk all over her. Or else of course you're not going to take the class seriously and not learn anything. You're not learning from that class because you're not expected to... because your teacher lets you get away with anything you want. I am not saying that my high school is "good" by my own standards, but rather by others' perception of high schools in general. But yes, my current lit teacher indeed does not teach us anything. My point, though, is that literature classes have never taught me anything. What am I supposed to gain through analyzing poetry or reading a book and remembering the plotline? Please, enlighten me. I think you should print out this quote and come back to look it in about five years and you can laugh at how immature you were
This statement breams with truth.
Knowing that Jake Barnes is impotent doesn't do you any good, but learning how to come to that conclusion on your own is learning to think at a higher level and that will help you immensely in pretty much any endeavor.
Seriously, by the time you've graduated with a 4-year degree (assuming you don't piss away your education), you're not going to believe that you could have ever thought that! :D
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fuck Jane Austen and her terribly boring works. Technically she's an ace, but fuck her for making my senior year of college sooooooo boring
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On December 22 2010 00:47 ffdestiny wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 17:34 jon arbuckle wrote:Never mind, I'm getting involved with this topic. On December 21 2010 16:20 Comeh wrote:On December 21 2010 15:59 bbq ftw wrote:However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system. What your saying is right, but I think you're conflating the inability to understand literature with the technical inability to write correctly (proper grammar, essay structure, etc.). The two, while correlated, are not directly linked. However, teachers in high school definitely do not teach us how to write essays properly. Pretty much stick with the 5 paragraph structure until you finish high school. Then, first day of college "yeah forget all that bullshit they tought you. That was just to make it easier to grade". ffdestiny, your passive employment of "reverberate" as a verb is awkward if not entirely wrong (and this comes from someone who has no ill will towards the passive construction). What you mean is that college professors iterate and reiterate that students entering higher education from the public education system are often painfully dumb with regards to structuring their arguments and even composing a sentence on mechanical, syntactic, and prosaic levels. The fact that many students drool their way through literary analysis and seem to care so little only exacerbates the problem, but by that point the student is as comfortable receiving a C+ as the professor is in giving it. The five paragraph essay structure is a function of laziness for the professor as well as the student. The professor, be they at the college or high school level, often loses their hope or interest in their students' brightness after approximately five years and wing their lectures from then on, the lectures being obligations for the prof but institutional foreplay in comparison to the school's publishing demands. At a high school level, even if you're lucky enough to have a teacher who has even a modicum of investment in literature or poetry, these teachers often realize that a small fraction of their class (if they're lucky) give half a fuck. Because this teacher can't logically fail every student who doesn't care, who can't read, who can't write, and who won't improve, especially if these students are interested in college- or University-level education, the teacher often sighs and gives out ad-hoc decent marks. If they didn't, the teacher's life would get substantially worse (because if all the students fail, it's assumed that the teacher is to blame, and if the teacher comes across like a hard-ass, then the students will check out more than they already have). Look, guys, literature is fundamentally about what it means to be a fucking human being. For any piece of poetry or any one story, short or novel-length, let alone a whole corpus of both, there are not only the author's intended meanings - responses to environmental and cultural assumptions and conditions themselves formed from other pieces of literature - but there are assumed meanings that figure into situation of the message within that literary work. All literature finds itself at the crossroads of numerous ideological, historical, and theoretical locations, finds itself involved in the politics of representation, finds itself fucking shaping the language by using it, consciously or un-, and the importance of reading literature involves the engagement of modalities beyond your immediate perception and then the understanding of how these new modalities interact with other modalities. To claim that historical and scientific texts provide the capital-T Truth is extreme positivism, if not outright sophism, and there exist infinitely more spacious accounts outside the deleterious restrictions of historiography (high school e.g. Slaughterhouse-Five) and natural science (high school e.g. Brave New World's invocation of science's general lack of an ethical dimension). Whether or not human perception has differed in over two millennia (like why Francis Bacon characterizes the Earth as a female that must be dominated or how history is composed and subject to human interference) is an argument that itself necessitates the reading and rereading of numerous texts, many of them literature. Literature is not about learning proper grammar (although a poor grasp of proper grammar, usage, or argumentation is inexcusable in collegiate literary analysis) and is definitely not about manipulating people through stylish, specious arguments (although the more one reads and writes, the better their style and grasp on tone in language gets, but I'm told this is something difficult to teach and learn, especially to someone who doesn't want to read at all). Literature is also definitely, definitely, definitely not about 'appearing smart'; I am almost embarrassed that people think this and that the consequent assumption is that anyone who reads is putting on a facade. In sum, someone took a horrible yet standard course in World Literature (which is a shame, because nowhere else will one get a better chance to explore the power and complexity of novels and poetry), and the world is worse off for it. I agree with mostly everything here (well written as well). However, literature is about finding the correct grasp of grammar usage; in fact, read enough Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, or George Eliot, and you'll be inundated with so much remarkable grammar use, you'll never know how to get out of it and go back to the bad habits.
Again, literature will deepen one's grasp of language, and someone who reads and writes more will likely write better. I'm not disputing that, but claiming that "literature is about finding the correct grasp of grammar usage" tends to aid arguments accusing literature of uselessness and irrelevance more than dispute it.
Although prescriptive grammar dawned on the English language before the 19th century, most Victorian authors are addled with commas that by modern grammatical standards interrupt clauses that don't need them. J.L. Austin's plain language philosophy and the advent and application of X-bar theory in formal linguistics has done a lot to redefine how we compose our sentences. Here is as good a place as any to note that synapse used his semicolon properly (which is the only defensible thing synapse said in this topic, I think).
Grammar is always shaped by usage, but if you're a "grammar Nazi," you're a staunch prescriptivist, and you should act like one.
On December 22 2010 00:47 ffdestiny wrote:
And yes reading does make you smart; in fact, I would go along with your argument about high school and make those damned kids actually invest time into reading and transferring what they learned into words, instead of the obtuse five-paragraph structure.
Whether or not reading makes one "smart" is open to interpretation - intelligence is situational - but you did not write that "reading makes you smart," you wrote, "it's learning how to be smart, which is the most valuable possession." This is not just smug (and it really is smug) but horrifyingly pretentious. Especially because grammatical familiarity is better fostered by studying linguistics, not literature, and analytical and critical reading from philosophy, not literature. But I do think literature binds these two things into something greater than themselves individually, so that's what I'm sayin'.
Additionally, not everyone who studies literature actually has critical reading skills, analytical skills, grammatical deftness, or maybe even intelligence.
On December 22 2010 00:47 ffdestiny wrote:
Also, from the Oxford English Dictionary:
reverberate, v.
"intr. Of sound: to resound, re-echo. Also fig.: (of reputation, news, etc.) to be much mentioned or repeated; (also) to have consequential effects."
Ex 1. 1872 W. Black Strange Adventures Phaeton xvii. 236 "The roar of the stream reverberating through the woods."
Ex 2. 1958 W. S. Churchill Hist. Eng.-speaking Peoples IV. x. iii. 47 "Cobden and Bright's thundering speeches against the landed classes reverberated through the nation."
I said it was awkward, not wrong, but let's do this. You wrote,
I'm in disagreement with how we "do" high school here in America. We should ultimately make it much more like college and "up" the value of learning over the banality of it. Of course my bitterness is usually eternal.
However, it is reverberated in many college professors when they say that when they receive students from high school they have to suffer with teaching them "the basics" because of the entirely inadequate public education system.
The passive is chiefly awkward because I have to pause to figure out the pronoun's precedent: what is reverberated? how we "do" high school here in America? the banality of high school? your eternal bitterness?
More problems arise when I rewrite this sentence to the active (especially because the active could be one of two things):
*However it is reverberated in many college professors when... =
*However NP reverberates NP in many college professors when...
*However many college professors reverberate NP when...
Both the examples you provide above (along with the definition itself) use reverberate intransitively, commanding the preposition through for the accompanying prepositional clause (i.e. an object of sound reverberates through a space). You employ the verb transitively, where somebody reverberates something when something happens.
That is not to say that reverberate cannot operate transitively: according to the Oxford English Dictionary, I reverberate something by causing it "to resound or re-echo," but *many college professors reverberate the banality of high school is still sloppy because "the banality of high school" is an object of thought and feeling, not sound. Now, many college professors reverberate my squeals that high school is banal is grammatically correct (but stylistically lame; never type that sentence, for real). Other uses, of reflection or deflection, are chiefly specialized, and don't help you much here.
If you want to add your two cents, like why you quoted the entry for the modern intransitive verb when you, a self-professed grammar Nazi, a real sophisticated braggadocio, used the verb transitively with an incorrect subject referent, I'd be happy to hear you. I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
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Wait, wait, wait.
Has there been about 6 paragraphs written about the usage of reverberated, which I'm sure was written at a fairly quick pace and with little thought behind it?
Come on guys, I think we might be focusing a little too much on word usage now. This is the internet after all.
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So, I tend to disagree with jon arbuckle in our stances towards music, postmodernity, and whatnot, but I have to say that he really made everyone else look quite silly here.
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I loved my economics teacher for similar reasons. I also know nothing about economics.
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That pic is magical thats why im going to write about esport soon and that pic will do the job for me :D
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On December 22 2010 05:40 Comeh wrote:
Wait, wait, wait.
Has there been about 6 paragraphs written about the usage of reverberated, which I'm sure was written at a fairly quick pace and with little thought behind it?
Come on guys, I think we might be focusing a little too much on word usage now. This is the internet after all.
I wouldn't be busting any balls in this topic if the guy whose balls I'm actively busting didn't spend a lot of time in this topic lordly tooting his horn as a "grammar Nazi." I'm just calling his bluff.
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On December 22 2010 06:08 LazyMacro wrote:
I loved my economics teacher for similar reasons. I also know nothing about economics.
Here's a tip - just CLAIM that you know something about economics. Then you will be just like everyone else in the world  . (then again, after 3 and a half semesters of undergraduate economics, I still don't feel like I have a good knowledge on the subject - but that just goes to show the depth that economics has)
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First, this is pragmatics (study of how language is used), not punctuation (which I corrected earlier) and your post is more Nazi than mine in terms of scope. For example, you first say my employment of "to reverberate" is passive and rather weak, then I post a defense explaining it's used transitively and is a much more "passive" style of usage (as in Winston Churchill's that I quoted) then you go on a dissertation about how essentially you identified it is used as a transitive, thus proving my point from the OED definition originally.
Excuse me, but my original post was a mere remark on the semicolon usage and an explanation/apology later on; the "grammar-Nazi" remark was a bit of sarcasm, as you can attest to yourself I am sure.
Let me go through your response just to prove I am up to par at analyzing as correctly and powerfully as you can:
(The boded words are problematic to your sentence structure and (possibly) make them weaker in terms of intention and delivery. NP = noun phrase, VP = verb phrase, etc.)
Again, literature will deepen one's grasp of language, and someone who reads and writes more will likely write better. I'm not disputing that, but claiming that "literature is about finding the correct grasp of grammar usage" tends to aid arguments accusing literature of uselessness and irrelevance more than dispute it.
To deepen means essentially to intensify, thus your employment of "will deepen" is awkward here because how can (logically) this sentence work, when literally defined:
Again (however etc.) Subject = literature + Verb = "will be intensifying in the future" plus the prepositional phrase "of language", which is highly incoherent if you ask me because of the inconsistency of the agreement to the verb; it is indeed correct to say, just like my little nod to "reverberate" but if we are getting banal here, I would recommend you use a stronger, more concise sentence structure to exemplify what you really want to say—to rewrite your sentence more concisely, try:
An individual who reads and writes develops skills in language.
Simply put, Subject + (as you wanted to say, but made it unclear, it is an individual who reads and writes to develop themselves, for example) + Verb = to develop (I think this verb fits exceptionally well, considering you are essentially speaking to an individual's ability to develop language skills.) Add onto this, the Object = "language" so essentially, VP = to develop skills in language, with the added preposition "in".
Other problems I noticed in the opening diatribe of your message that is bolded above for reference:
The use of "someone" implies a generality, which in the scope of pragmatics means essentially nothing, it is (at best) an empty word. I steer away from the usage (although it crops up for me all the time), and opt for a more interpersonal employment of "an individual" meaning, the person sitting and reading the screen is not a "someone" but THE "someone" who I am referring.
The usage of "but claiming" is wrong, at least in tense. You either claim, claimed or will claim, since you have employed a "weaker" form of the future tense by the usage of "claiming". I would rewrite it to say "but I claim" to employ the correct tense, meaning the present (as in, you are sitting there writing the post at that time to make a claim).
Another problem, "tends to aid" here you employed a rather confusing VP of (literal meaning) "tending/inclination/possibilities" of "to aid" does that sound well thought out? I believe it is not fully realized. Instead, I would correct that by saying "to help" the argument, you did want to say that it "helps" the argument instead of "tends to aid".
You end with a drawn out prepositional phrase of "uselessness and irrelevance more than dispute it" which obviously is hard to understand given the mere syllabic content of the big words "uselessness" and "irrelevance". For all I know you inserted those words in there to sound a bit more heavy-handed with your knowledge. Obviously that is fine, but it would make more sense (at least pragmatically) to omit the long prepositional, as you essentially said the argument that you are trying to make in the first two sentences of your opening line.
Let me rewrite that opening passage to be more concise:
An individual who reads and writes develops skills in language. This helps them argue effectively against those who find literature useless.
These are a few tips that I can spare for this moment. I likely will not comment on this post again, given the lengths we all have been through. I actually enjoyed your posts Jon, they were very helpful. When one gets to view themselves outside of their sphere, it is ever more encouraging to find possible faults.
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EPT
