Grammar book...

I don't hate grammar. I really don't. I hate when grammar supersedes writing.

Grammar is a tool. It should help us be better writers. Studying grammar to the exclusion of actually writing is like studying a hammer without ever letting it hit a nail. What's the point?

But studying grammar as a tool allows writers to learn all the amazing things the language can do. Then they can venture into more ornate writing projects.

If you want to become a better writer... write! And read. Once you've conquered reading and writing, you can work on your "grammaring" skills so that you don't [metaphorically speaking] pound your thumb or bend the nail.

[Many thanks to Chandler for loaning me the picture.]

May I rant about language... just a little?

I guess by definition a rant isn't "just a little" anything. Oh well.

This is purely an English teacher rant and has NOTHING to do with my school. NOTHING.

It does have everything to do with a linguistic approach to grammar, though. At my beloved alma mater, I had THE linguistics professor as my grammar teacher for both undergrad grammar and grad school grammar. I loved her.

She made grammar come alive, and yes, we covered traditional grammar and diagrammed the socks out of a gazillion sentences. I have climbed Mt. Traditional Grammar and staked a flag in its peak. But it wasn't traditional grammar that made me go "Woo Ha." It was the underlying linguist's approach to teaching language.

You see, a linguist studies language as it is and not so much as it SHOULD be. Language is dynamic... growing and changing. When it stops growing and changing, it dies, like just about everything else in this world.

Latin is fixed because it is a dead language. There are no more living native speakers of the language. That's one reason it's such a great tool for teaching -- the rules don't change.

English is another story. A year ago "LOL" was cutting edge in slang. Today if you say "LOL," you're old. A month ago you said, "haha." Today, you say "LOLs" or "LOLz." A year ago "stalking" was the term you used if you visited someone else's profile on Facebook. Today you say, "creeping." If the forefront of language (slang) has changed that much in a year, imagine what the whole language has done in 400 years.

I just finished teaching Shakespeare. We read a modern translation of Merchant of Venice because my plans got a little off and we had only two weeks to read, analyze, and test on the play. Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English. We speak Modern English. There's a gap. Are the students stupid because they can't read Early Modern English as well as they can Modern English? Not at all. Modern English is their native language. They get it.

But Shakespeare (and for that matter, the writers of our historical founding documents) was working with vocabulary and syntax that differs from what we use today. So what does that mean? Well, it means we have to do a little historical native language teaching and a little translating before we can get to the ideas they communicate.

I teach journalism. We are all about connecting with our audience. Today's writing is short. Sound bites. Sentence fragments. Conversational. It's that way because it's more accessible to more people, and believe it or not, the objective of being a journalist is to get ideas/events/news out there to the people. Getting read is a good thing.

Does that mean that thought-provoking, intellectually deep articles are a waste of time. Absolutely not. However, like everything else, there is a time and a place. Different types of writing are appropriate at different times.

It's all about connecting the message with the audience. To do that, sometimes we have to write the message in the audience's language, and other times, we have to teach a few language lessons before the audience "gets" the writer's point. And you know what? Either way, it's OK.

Another group leaves the nest...

(I guess I should have put on my glasses before I took this picture.)

Our editor-in-chief, Julie, and assistant editor, Jason. They have poured their hearts in to our (now many) publications. I am so proud of them.

I love y'all and I'm going to miss you both. Stay in touch. (That is an imperative statement.)

Seniority...

As the school year winds down there's the giddiness of summer, for sure. And then there's the bittersweet goodbye that comes with graduation.

My foray back into teaching has been amazing. That there were ups and downs is almost an understatement. After many trips down to the administrative suite at the beginning of the year to make sure we were all "on the same page" about the role of the student publication, I almost quit. I wanted to teach ground-breaking journalism from a Christian worldview and I felt like we were publishing a mini-version of the yearbook.

Then two things happened. First, one of my students, JT, wrote a story on Jon Foreman (Switchfoot). It'd be a LONG story to tell all the details, but the short version is that JT wrestled through the process and brought forth a piece that left me speechless. "This is why I teach," was all I could say for quite a while after reading it.

Second, I was down in the administrative wing yet again at the beginning of the second semester, this time trying to determine whether we were allowed to publish "Best of 2008" movie review of The Dark Knight. The answer was no. The surface reason was that the school doesn't condone PG-13 movies. The real reason... administration didn't want to offend families that feel like they must walk a very narrow road in order to remain in God's will for their lives. It reminded me of Romans 14 and 15, and for the first time, instead of wanting to quit, I "got it" that there are many modern day equivalents to eating meats sacrificed to idols. And for the sake of the weaker brother, I'd rather not eat meat again. MB was the student writer for The Dark Knight. He didn't like sacrificing a piece he'd worked on so hard, but he (and I) submitted to those in authority. No regrets. (On a happy-ending note... MB loves film making and he took his passion for movies and entered a film festival where he won three awards.)

After The Dark Knight incident, I was cool, and instead of pining away for the end of the school year (Read: my contract to be fulfilled so I could get out), I couldn't wait to go to work each day.

I am so proud of our kids. They did an awesome job. And the seniors... wow... I'm going to miss those guys so much. I can't wait to see how the Lord is going to use them as they go to college and get on with life outside the walls of our little school.

Our Editors:

JG: Editor-in-Chief

KW: Assistant Editor

MW: Copy Editor

JM: Design Editor

JM will serve as our Editor-in-Chief next year. Yay!

MW and KW are headed for the same college at the beach.

JG is going to my alma mater and planning to major in journalism, though he is the quintessential English professor in the making. He'll figure it out, though. :)

These are the seniors. All of them are in Europe this week. Join me in praying for their safety and that they'll have an amazing time.

JG, KW, MW, MB, CD, KA, JT, AE, JM, AC

And creeping in the background is KO. She's just a sophomore, but she's not returning to our school next year. I'm going to miss her too!

What an amazing time of life... full of possibilities, packed with dreams. I pray the Lord will guide them and protect them as they travel the next steps of their journey.

I am blessed to have taught them all.

Videos that make you go hmmmm...

This time it's not because they're stupid. Actually, it's totally the opposite.

My friend, Suzanne, posted a link on my Facebook to a great You Tube video about how we regularly mangle the language. Suzanne thinks. A lot. She's really smart. She even taught her hamsters how to use a litter box. She was a psych major. I did well not to un-house-train the dog when we got her.

So I kinda got into the What You Ought To Know series on You Tube. It started with this:





And then I watched this:



And next thing I knew, I spent a couple of hours watching lots of videos that really made me think. So I went to their website:

http://www.whatyououghttoknow.com/.

Then I got sad because I found out they ran out of money and are taking a break. Maybe forever. No money'll do that to ya.

So, if you get a chance, toodle over and give a few of the clips a watch. I highly recommend "Bailout! Bailout!" and "Gay Marriage" (the video, not the practice) and "Liberals vs. Conservatives." Not saying that I agree 100% with EVERYTHING he says, but I am 100% behind the idea that we need to be thinking. This is absolutely not the time to be living life in the passive lane.

Headlines that make you go hmmm...

1. Alaskan Middle School Students Scare Moose to Death

I know it's tragic, poor moose and all, but this sounds a lot like a Monty Python skit gone horribly wrong.


2. Researcher Uses His Thoughts to Update Twitter

OK... Had he been tweeting someone else's thoughts when updating Twitter until now? I almost always use my thoughts when I'm updating Twitter. Unless I'm re-tweeting, and even then, I think to do that.

3. How to Buy Souvenirs That You'll Want to Remember

Seriously? Isn't a souvenir--you know, by definition--something you buy because you want to remember?

The beauty of Southern dialect...

I majored in English at THE University of North Carolina. Go Heels! (It's March. I have to say that or I could get a nasty rash from suppressing the sentiment.)

In my time at Chapel Hill, I was blessed to have Connie Eble as my grammar instructor for a couple of different classes. What I loved most about her class was that she taught grammar from a linguist's perspective. Now if you don't know what a linguist's perspective is, the short explanation is that they observe and report language without pronouncing the superiority of one form over another. As a matter of fact, you give a linguist a dialect and they just revel in the ins and outs of things like vocabulary and syntax and idiom. It makes them absolutely giddy.

One of the greatest exercises I have EVER encountered in an English classroom -- graduate, undergraduate or secondary-- was the Shibboleth exercise we did when we began our unit on usage. I fell in love with language on that day.

Three other things from Connie Eble's class that stuck in my brain and became part of my personal language philosophy are as follows:

1. English is essentially a Germanic language, although we have borrowed nearly 50% of our vocabulary from Latin. Yet, in all our academic brilliance, we have decided to define our language structure by the rules that govern the Romance languages. Basically, our method of diagramming sentences is the linguistic equivalent of putting square pegs into round holes. No wonder so many people hate doing it.

2. English grammar is helpful but not essential in writing. Writing is like driving a car. You can drive a car and get exactly where you want to go every time and never have a clue how the engine works. But if you want to drive a race car for maximum performance or if you're car breaks down and you don't want to be stranded forever, it behooves you to understand how the engine works. So it is with language. If you want to use the language well, you need to know how to maximize its performance. And certainly if your writing breaks down and can't communicate to your reader, you need to know how to fix it.

3. Who sets the rules of grammar? Well...? OK, think about who taught YOU the rules of the language. Your English teacher. Your English professor. Maybe a journalist here or there. Basically, the "safe-keepers" of the English language are English instructors. They write books about what's right and what's not. Woo Hoo! I can feel the surge of power coursing through my veins.

Now where on Earth was I going with this post? Oh yes... the beauty of Southern dialect... Before I sat under Dr. Eble's instruction, I had a distinct feeling that there was a right and wrong way of doing things. If I did wrong, there would be red. If I did right, there would be an "A."

Having a linguist teach language, I became aware for the first time of the beauty of language in the vernacular. The speech of the native speaker. The glory of dialect. My dialect is Southern American English. I never really appreciated SAE before that moment. Now, it's a treasure.

Some of my favorite SAE sayings:

1. "fixing to" - indicating preparation for an impending course of action. I am fixing to get up and go cook dinner.

2. "might could" - a double modal that is MOST helpful in indicating potential without certainty. I might could cook dinner a little better if I actually went to the grocery store and bought food.

3. "y'all" - properly used as the collective/plural second person pronoun. Y'all need to come over and eat dinner with us after church on Sunday.

4. "won't" - Unique to certain parts of the South, won't is a substitute for the first person singular form or the verb to be. Q: Who ate the last piece of sweet potato pie? A: It won't me.

5. "Bless your heart" - That one is very complex. Here's a nice summary of it. It could possibly be the ultimate Southern Shibboleth.