Librarian fired for supporting a top reader

[Stetson]

This. Not something you use every day, but very useful for how these word-bits are to be assembled.

Maybe.  Tutoring a kid who is 3 yrs behind due to a bad public school.  He is home schooled now.  I can't help him with English class when they ask about 'verb' or 'relative' clauses.  I don't know what they are.  I used to know and was pretty good at it. but it's not something I have used since then.

[230RN]

You can tell who on most Internet forums is a reader and who never was a reader.  So many have terrible grammar and spelling skills - and are often college graduates.  You learn more about spelling and grammar from reading good literature than a teacher can ever teach you.

+ 1 2 dat.

[CNYCacher]

This reminds me when my wife was teaching third grade, and one of her students told her that she was the student's 'fourth most-favorite teacher'.  I had to count on my fingers: K, 1, 2, and 3 before I got it.

Coming form a third grader, I would interpret that to mean that every year, the student has had a "Most Favorite Teacher", and your wife was the fourth one.

[BlueStarLizzard]

*shrug*

I was one of the mouth breathing nearly illiterate kids till third grade.
The school put me in a special class. I have no clue how the woman did it, but by the end of the year I was reading several grade levels ahead of my classmates.

Still can't spell and my grammer sucks, but I can read. I hated reading out loud, though. Still have trouble with that. Boomhaurer would have thought I couldn't if we had shared a class. I read so fast that I end up a scentance or two ahead of my mouth. Same with writing (you'll notice I often drop words. Or at least that's what I always try to go back and edit. I thought it in there, just was past that by the time I typed it)

I really wish I remembered more of that class, and how I was taught, because I figure if I could apply the method that taught me to read to my writing, maybe I'd get better.

Anyway, ahh the joys of learning disability. :)

Also, Barnes and Noble should cut that teacher a check, considering how much cash I've dropped in that store over the years.

[vaskidmark]

I remember around 7th grade the English teacher dipped into diagramming sentences for a couple of days; we simply couldn't make heads nor tails out of what he was trying to teach, so he finally gave up. General consensus is that it was just some nonsense "someone" came up with to justify their job or generate a consultant's fee.

You  do not drop diagraming on students without having made the parts of speech a daily part of the clasroom curriculum.  But since your class monitor did just that, your response was highly appropriate and I am glad he did give up sooner rather than later.

Want to make an English teacher's head explode? Ask her to diagram a sentence from some "Great Work of Literature" like Shakespeare . . . or better yet, James Joyce.

Bring it on, buddy-boy!  Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, or maybe something out of Dubliners?

I'm not sure Shakespeare knew anything about grammar as grammar, but both he and Joyce needed to know how words fitted together to convey meaning.  We mere mortals, who do not have their inate ability, have devised a way of describing what they did if not how they did it.  (Or, alternatively, we stand slack-jawed and drooling while marveling at their accomplishments.)

stay safe.

[roo_ster]

Just one sentence.  The last sentnce of ulysses.

[vaskidmark]

Just one sentence.  The last sentnce of ulysses.

1,288 words - The Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for what it claims is the longest sentence in English, from William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!.
4,391 words - The last section of James Joyce's Ulysses, Molly Bloom's soliloquy.
13,955 words - Jonathan Coe's 2001 novel The Rotters' Club contains a 13,955-word sentence.
469,375 words - Nigel Tomm's one-sentence novel, which does not have a proper subject-verb interaction, The Blah Story.

All of them are easy, but Faulkner's is the easiest because he understands that grammar and punctuation work hand in hand, as opposed to Joyce's stream of consiousness run-on sentence (in which he follows all the rules except for punctuation).  The other two are merely run-on sentences that apparently serve as the exemplars for most of what passes for composition by anyone under the age of roughly 35

All I need is either enough rolls of paper or a computer diagraming program that can handle more than about 100 words.  And truth to tell, it is more difficult to keep the train of thought when diagraming than when reading any of those four.

stay safe.

[230RN]

Just one sentence.  The last sentnce of ulysses.

Yeaaaaahhhh...  I can see the diagram of that one covering all of the school's blackboards and most of the pavement in the parking lot.

Thanks for the laugh!

Terry

[vaskidmark]

Yeaaaaahhhh...  I can see the diagram of that one covering all of the school's blackboards and most of the pavement in the parking lot.

Thanks for the laugh!

Terry

Skip the blackboards - the diagram will be much more vertical than horizontal.  And some of the shifts from level to level will make the triple black diamond ski runs look like the bunny slope!

I'm going to need another stick of chalk to do this one.

stay safe.

[230RN]

Well, the funny thing is that somehow, after all those years, I thought Molly's stream-of-consciousness was more toward the middle of the book.  So I had to go look at my copy to see what the "last sentence" was, opened it to the last page, and suddenly had to laugh like hell.

I still love the opening passage, with Buck Mulligan coming down the stairs bearing aloft "a bowl of lather on which a mirror and  razor lay crossed."
--Introibo ad altere Dei.

It jacked me back to my altar boy training days.

Terry