Posts tagged English.
The entire point of this lesson was to teach relative clauses and pronouns so the students can RECOGNIZE, UNDERSTAND, and USE them.
So what the actual what is up with these stupid, contradictory instructions?! No wonder English education is so messed up in this country!
Japan, I’m so done with you. No one will ever learn English because of this backwards joke of an educational system.
This has burned the heart out of me.
That awkward moment when you don’t even understand your own language.
Wait.
That’s every moment in Japan.
I’m an English teacher in Japan. While I’m usually wasting my time repeating the word “red” and “cat” to four-year-olds, once a week I have a conversation class in which I try to open the minds of several very bright, but very sheltered young adults.
Last week, I asked the students to bring in an article from the news to discuss. Let’s just say I was less than thrilled when every single student brought in the exact same story.
The biggest news in Japan is about a girl from a popular singing group seeing a boy, being shamed for it, and buzzing all her hair off. Said boy has no comment. I wanted to talk about the Algeria hostage crisis. Nope. AKB48 ruled the day. I may actually hit my head off a wall if this continues. At least I got to teach the vocabulary: misogynist, delusion, and absurd.
While it’s frustrating that THIS is the “scandal of the year” and this country is lacking depth worse than a desert lacking rain, the smell of sexist bullshit is rank. I’m seriously getting noxious fumes.
Go ahead. Read the article.
Dear Classmates Studying Linguistics in Graduate School:
Y U NO CITE SOURCES PROPERLY!? The lack of MLA/APA citations is making my eyes bleed. You’re supposed to be better than this.
Love,
Jenn
I mean, she put parentheses INSIDE parentheses! What the actual fuck? HAS NO ONE GONE THROUGH ENGLISH COMPOSITION 101?! Has no one heard of brackets and braces? Oh, the humanity!
I teach English in Japan and this unexpected message was waiting for me when I walked into my classroom. I mean sure, I feel bad for the guy too, but the last line is a bit ominous…
Are Books Bad?
“Between you and I” is grammatically incorrect based on the rule that pronouns at the end of a prepositional phrase are always in the objective case. In the objective case, the first person singular pronoun is “me.” The correct form is “between you and me.” However, the former construction has been commonly used (by the likes of even Shakespeare and Mark Twain) since the mid 18th century and has become a part of the vernacular. Why have we been consistently breaking the established rule?
Some linguists, such as Chomsky, argue that “between you and I” can be correct. They state that the entire phrase “you and I” is the object of the preposition. Therefore, the individual components and case become arbitrary. Language grows. I’m aware of this and supportive of it. However, this doesn’t seem to be a recent change. The prescriptively erroneous phrase “between you and I” has been in regular use for centuries, so I wouldn’t call this an organic evolution. To me, it doesn’t matter if the entire phrase is the object of the preposition—that indicates that both pronouns should be in the objective case, not in the subjective.
Personally, I always use “between you and me.” Which do YOU typically say? Which feels more natural? Why?
An amazingly bizarre thank you/goodbye message from one of my “very talented” 6th graders. (I love how he called me Mr. Gen!) XD
ACCENT CHALLENGE.
