L2Grammar?

So I have had a few people ask me what the heck L2Grammar means.  I guess this one falls under the "don't take anything for granted category" because I thought it was self evident for younger people.  Oh well.

Urban Dictionary to the rescue!

The TL:DR version is that it means learn to grammar.
--Blake

p.s. we know what tl:dr means right?

Theory of Multiple Stupidities

We have been talking about Gardner’s theories of multiple intelligences in our psychology class and this made me think about a lot of the negativity I have noticed from some teachers.  First off, being realistic is just a euphemism that pessimists use.  No one wants to admit to being a pessimist but let’s be realistic shall we?  Second, I am not a genius.  If we are to describe learners as having a thirst for knowledge and smart people as a fountain of knowledge then I am, at best, a leaky faucet which is probably more annoying than elucidating. 

The theory of multiple intelligences, however, states that a person might not be universally smart but rather that, they can excel in one area and need a lot of help in another.  For example you might have a student who is on the road to becoming the next Shakespeare but when faced with a math problem they start sweating like a dyslexic in a spelling bee.  The problem I have with this is how we label students as certain types of learners.  Oh I am a visual learner so if you don’t give me a diagram I am not going to figure it out.  Guess what, diagrams help everyone.  I would much rather it be viewed as the theory of multiple aptitudes meaning that you are not dumb everywhere except your field but rather that you possess a strong aptitude towards something.

With that being said it might take some students longer to figure out a certain concept than others but with effort most will get there.  The key is that effort is required.  If you are reading this you are most likely in the education program and you have had success in your schooling.  Now imagine if your teacher wrote you off as being dumb simply because a concept did not come naturally for you.  Maybe someone told you that you weren’t smart in that field but don’t worry everyone has something they are good at.  Truth is maybe you would have figured it out in two minutes or even two months but you would have eventually figured it out.  Unfortunately, now you write yourself off in that subject area because it is not your field.  If you want the practical application of this then try working in the trades industry with an English and history degree and see what kind of respect you are afforded for your accomplishments.  The moment you write someone off as an English person or a math person is the same moment that you cater towards the English people in your English classes and let the math people slide, whereby they could potentially be missing out on something that they might find truly rewarding.

The point is that there is nothing inside my head which is so complex that it cannot be explained to someone who wants to learn it.  I enjoy teaching not only because I love the random analogies that I come up with to explain concepts (like me being an idiot jumping out and scaring someone at a certain corner everyday as an example of classical conditioning) but also because I love to share the knowledge that I have.  This is how my mind works.  Yes I am being self deprecating when I call myself a leaky faucet of knowledge but what benefit does it serve anyone to stand up all high and mighty on a degree claiming to be the source of all knowledge.  Is it not better to be on the same level as your students learning with them as they go along?  The best teachers I have seen are the ones who know their material, know their students, and can make fun of themselves. 

So yeah I am going to keep calling myself an English dork… and I will do it with enthusiasm.

--Blake

It's all relative.. Wait what?

This is the most important picture you will ever analyze.  No seriously.  For those who don’t speak French ceci n’est pas une pipe translates to, this is not a pipe.  If you are anything like me the first time you faced this picture you’re thinking “um no actually it is a pipe but thanks for trying.”  So here’s the deal.  This is a painting by Rene Magritte and that is the key.  No, not the Magritte part, the painting part.  That is a picture of a pipe not a pipe itself.  Famously when asked Magritte said, “Of course it is not a pipe.  Just try to put tobacco in it.”

Alright so why is that idea so important?  Well as a future English teacher this directly relates to language.  All language is metaphor.  By this I mean, when I say pipe we both know what I am implying but, the word pipe is not the thing pipe, and second, my idea of a pipe could be drastically different from your idea of a pipe.  Enter exhibit b: A parody of the work by Magritte but still totally fitting.  (I am sure students will love this one)

Our world is based upon language and communication.  Everything you can touch, taste, see, or smell is a derivative of language.  The very way in which we process information is based upon this concept.  We think in language and yet these very building blocks for the foundation of all cultures are subjective.  When it comes down to it why is it that we have this communal agreement that the thing pipe should be called a pipe and be spelled with characters pipe.  Why can it not be a florgydorfal or a trug.  It is an interesting concept to say that everything we know is not only relative but essentially arbitrary.  It is really amazing to see what the human species has accomplished based upon random noises.

--Blake

Bloom's Taxonomy vs The Times Colonist

So the Times Colonist posted a link talking about a poll on the foundation of Canada.  The question simply asked “Who do you think founded Canada” and the poll revealed that the response depends on who you ask.  Essentially, if you live in Quebec or are French speaking you are more likely to say the French; otherwise you will most likely say English.  Funny that no one mentioned the Vikings who arrived in Canada long before other Europeans.  Oh but wait.. what about the First Nations?  They have existed here for thousands of years and well before European explorers ever set foot on Canadian soil.  There was some backlash when this was talked about on a local radio station.  Feelings were hurt even though that was not the intent.

 

The truth is all of those answers are correct; the answer really depends upon perspective.  The question is very open ended.  What constitutes the founding of Canada?  Is it the first people to set foot on the territory?  Is it the first people to map the area and label it as Canada?  Is it the people who established Canadian confederation?  None of this is asked in the question and yet all of these factors must be addressed as they key to tempering one’s response.

I bring this up because it brings up the issue of what makes a good question and a bad question.  Had this question been “Who do you think founded Canada and why?” there would have been the opportunity to explain what one implies in the term found, but as it stands now that is not what the question is asking.  It is a good question in that it allows wide interpretation but if one is looking for a specific answer it is rather horrible.  This brings up the necessity for precision of language even though language is not very precise. 

That is an idea I shall explore in the next post.

--Blake

I are back!

So… Yeah…  I have been MIA on here for the last while.  I have lots I to talk about, but unless blogging is a specific assignment I have to feel motivated before I want to sit down and process my thoughts.  So, for example, many responded about their observations recently, mine was awesome by the way, but after talking about it in pretty much every class, coming home and blogging about it was about as high on my list as giving myself a root canal… with no anesthesia… using rusty tools… while standing on my head.  I am sure other students in the program feel that reading another blog about another practicum is just as tedious and as such… no posts from me lately.

Today, however, I woke up feeling the motivation to write.  Don’t ask me why but there it is.  So I have a few things I want to talk about and in order to avoid a wall of text I shall cover them one post at a time.  For now I will start with a gift to make up for my absence, and that gift is prompted by today’s English methods class where we finally started talking about poetry.  At the end of the class we were asked to list our three favourite poems.  I never enjoy questions like these because I always feel like I am missing something on my list that should trump what I came up with.  It is like asking for your favourite movie of all time.  It’s just not fair!

Without further ado, however, my list was the following. 

“Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson

“My Mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun” by Shakespeare

“The Cinnamon Peeler” by Michael Ondaatje

Already I can think of other poems that beg to be on this list, but The Cinnamon Peeler is one that has to remain as I just adore this poem.  I will definitely post more poetry and possibly literature which I love but today this is my gift to you.

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women

the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume.

and knew

what good is it

to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in an act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

So why do I love this poem so much?  Well it has to be about the sexiest poem that I have ever come across.  The last three stanzas should really come with some sort of warning label.  CAUTION DO NOT READ WITH YOUR PARENTS PRESENT or WARNING DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY AND READ THIS POEM.  The way that Ondaatje takes smell, morphs it from being a sort of sexist claiming ritual, into timidity, and finally into an act of desire and longing is just breathtaking.  The imagery to be wounded without the pleasure of a scar is enough to make even a nun weak in the knees in my opinion.  And did you ever think that someone saying “smell me” could actually be sexy? 

I adore the way that Ondaatje plays with the sense of smell in this poem.  Smell is our most powerful sense and it is easily the most consuming and visceral.  If you smell something lovely, like fresh baked bread, rain on hot pavement, or recently cut grass, you cannot help to stop and breathe in a moment of elation.  Tying smell to the trope of a desire to be claimed and not caring who knows it is just brilliance.  I personally cannot read this poem without feeling like some sort of hopeless romantic and while I would love to analyze every line in the interest of brevity I will let the poem stand for itself

--Blake

When should you grammar?

The classic "slow children" sign.
Perhaps CAUTION or Drive Slowly
would have been a better choice.
© Second Print Productions

Edited using picnick.  Painted over the
original boy image and replaced with
a stamp.

Today’s assignment is to edit a photo online using two different online editors.  Once I have finished that, I am to post the photos online describing the programs I used, the methods for editing, and which program I preferred.  The task is simple enough, but it does not have much to do with grammar. So I thought I would add a little twist to keep my theme and to stress when grammar is essential.   

A Neck Dote All Evidense

I work part time in the trade industry in order to pay the bills while in school.  Doing so has brought up the interesting dichotomy of being an English major in an environment where little value is placed upon whether or not you can identify a word usage error.  But, even here the importance of grammar comes up every now and then.  When he is in a good mood, my boss is fully capable of self deprecation, and one of his favourite stories to tell is the one where he had to engrave a plaque for an award.  Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and my boss is a very intelligent person, but English is definitely not his strong point, particularly spelling. 

Edited with Sumopaint.  Cut and pasted the boy image to
right.  Created a cartoon bomb using the paint features.
Cropped.

The story goes; he was tasked to engrave a safety award which he did with exquisite precision.  The award looked very professional and it was presented to the company and put on display immediately.  Unfortunately my boss never made a safety award; instead, he made a SAFTY award.  The error was not found until months after the award had been on display and as a result he was suitably embarrassed.

That being said, anytime your work is on display for public scrutiny grammar receives great importance.  If you want to look professional and you don’t want the message you're conveying construed into something completely different, then you had better care about grammar.  Otherwise you end up seeing things like actual church signs which read “Dont let worries kill you let the church help.”

  

--Blake

Review: It has been a while since I have edited a photo but both Picnik and Sumopaint were pretty straightforward.  Picnik definitely took less time to achieve the desired result, but I guess what I did with Sumopaint was a little more complex. The biggest thing I liked about Sumopaint was the ability to Ctrl Z to undo, which is something that I do very often when editing photos.  The simple user interface is probably Picnik's best feature.  I don't have a real strong preference to either at the moment, however, if pressed I would probably lean towards Picnik.

I can has Twitter?

So the assignment this week was to sign up for twitter and I must say it was not without controversy.  There appears to be a lot of resistance to Twitter from the class for various reasons.  Some just plain don’t like Twitter; others fail to see the relevance for a classroom setting.  Even after being shown a video about the beneficial uses of twitter in the class, I am not without my reservations.

Forget the probable distraction it will cause when Paris Hilton twits about her new shoes and all the students in the class are instantly notified.  Forget the detached social interaction of sitting behind a computer screen twitting with the twit sitting right next to you.  And forget the privacy / security concerns when random lurker guy starts twitting spam to students.  The part that concerns me with Twitter the most is the 140 character limit.

Y Shud U care about 140 chars?

All the benefit Twitter can bring to an English classroom will be gone the moment a student runs out of room on his twit, and the only way to shorten it enough is to remove all the commas and apostrophes and then replace real words with shortened forms.

Grammar is getting worse these days and my theory as to why is twofold.  First, 100 years ago there was a much greater emphasis on grammar.  Of the three or four English classes that you would take in high school, one of them would be grammar.  That’s it, just grammar.  Second, if you wanted entertainment at home you would read.  There weren’t many other options for storytelling when TV and radio weren’t around.

TL;DR

People still read lots today.  In fact I would not be surprised if young people read more today, thanks to the internet, than they did 100 years ago.  The problem is that they are reading either poorly edited websites, or forums, texts, and status updates which have no grammar rules at all.  In the case of Twitter you are almost forced to throw grammar out the window if you have something meaningful to say so that you can stay within the character limit.  Maybe we can squeak a Harry Potter novel into young kids if they let their guard down, or we can convince teen girls to read a watered down vampire love story if there is some steamy heartthrob on the cover.  In general, however, people today have such short attention spans that “fast entertainment” supersedes reading something truly engaging and thought provoking.

Twitter, for better or worse, is probably here to stay, whether or not it will make it into my classroom remains to be seen.  For now, I am joining the twits to see how it goes.

--Blake