* this is a post from over three years ago, and although I would love to think my grammar skills have improved …
Recently, it happened AGAIN. And I hate it when it happens.
It makes me feel so … inferior, so …unknowledgeable, so … dumb 😦
Sigh, and the reality is … it will happen again, and again, and again … alot!
The funny thing is, it never happened to bother me, when I was a student.
It didn’t seem to have any effect on my self confidence, as a kid.
Or even on my school marks.
Heck, not even my college marks!
It really didn’t surface until, O, I think it was my first day working in a high school.
The ‘it’ I refer to is … good grammar …
I remember that day so well. I had gotten a job as a SEA (Special Education Assistant), and my role was to assist students with their learning. Not all students have the same learning capacity, nor the same learning style, nor speed. An SEA assists them in learning in a way, and with special materials, tools and curriculum that helps those students reach their potential. That was (is) my job.
What happens when the ‘assistant’ to a student is the equivalent to Shrek in the Kingdom of Grammar? That would be me (I think I might be more fairly compared to Donkey in that kingdom).
So, on my first day of high school, for the second time (I did graduate from high school, by the way), I went, along with my student, to English 9. And it was there that my lack of good grammar skills were giving me chills. I remember, as the teacher used words like:
NOUN and PRONOUN (aren’t they the same thing, just one being positive …’pronoun”?)
VERB and ADVERB (and aren’t they the same thing, just one being extra verbious … ‘adverb’?)
PREPOSITION
CONJUNCTION
INTERJECTION
PREPOSTION
My head started swirling, my palms were clammy, my knees were knocking … all because I feared the teacher was gonna call on me to answer the question that none of the students were answering. For that endless period of time, I was back in high school … all over again, and I really wasn’t appreciating the deja vu .
Being in that class, was so good for me! In that year I learned the meaning of noun, pronoun, verb, adverb and lots of other parts of speech. But, I am learning that there is still so much I don’t know … it’s amazing that I can communicate at all!
Recently I learned there are two ‘O’s’. One is ‘O’, and the other is ‘Oh’, and the two have different uses (who knew?). ‘Oh’ is used as an exclamation of emotion. On the other hand, ‘O’ is used to address someone or something. The best way to differentiate them is “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”, and “O God, there’s a snake!” (so, ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ would have a very different meaning … this will make you look at worship songs on your screen or monitor next weekend very differently).
I also recently learned that ‘alot’ is not a word (who knew?). The correct way to go is to use it as two words, ‘a lot’ … but them it doesn’t really make sense … ‘I love chocolate a lot’ (so I love chocolate … on a lot … in a lot … so confusing). The best thing to do is to switch ‘alot’ with ‘much’ … I love chocolate … much (hum, I still think alot sounds better, and anyone who knows me, knows I do love chocolate alot).
And then there is ‘ain’t’ … heck I cannot find evidence of it being a real, acceptable word, or not, it is just so confusing, some say it is and some say it isn’t (ain’t), all I have to say is that at my age, and the way I write (and talk), using the word ain’t, ain’t my problem … it’s run on sentences, and I ain’t gonna fix that one any time soon!