My reading of classics was a completed action before my past tense attendance at high school. Her taking of classes was a completed action before her past tense claim. Our correction of papers a completed action before our past return of the papers to the professors( -or our geese would have been cooked). My seeing was in the past; the inaction of the students was a completed past (in)action before my past seeing took place. At the time in the past when the last meeting occurred, my colleague most certainly "was NOT enthusiastic" or he would not have been seeking another position. He had been thoroughly disillusioned by the bigotry and stupidity of the dean at a time on the past. Not even the grossest of nescience can justify the ignorance/illiteracy shown in the suggested change to the sentence. If you know that little about English, you are wasting my time and everyone else's on this list. I have more to do than waste my time with a patently illiterate commenter. Do not bother replying; I shall not waste my valuable time reading such asininities. I disagree very strongly with some of the posters but I respect their opinions. Your usage of tenses would rate an F in my eighth-grade English class if I were teaching one again. In my seventh grade class, I would only fail you after I had taught sequence of tenses. I should remark that none of my seventh-grade students failed a test requiring them to write using correct sequence of tenses. Then again, they were primarily the children of homes where the parents read no newspapers or magazines. N. Scott Catledge, PhD/STD Professor Emeritus history & languages _____ From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 8:04 AM To: Scott Catledge Subject: Well-crafted English works I (had read) read most of the classics (in English) -- fiction and non-fiction -- before high school. Mississippians could graduate with pitifully few academic credits: a very intelligent friend claimed that she (had taken) took all 10 academic classes that were offered by her school. It was legal for us to show our marked and corrected themes to each other to ensure that we (had corrected) corrected all the errors before we turned them back to the professor. I saw students who (had never written) never wrote a theme turn in well-crafted papers by the end of third quarter. Then again, I met a colleague at SAMLA who (had been) was enthusiastic about his up-coming assignment to establish a Freshman English curriculum at his new school. He (had been told) was told that his new English classes were efforts to impose a outdated middle-class White written language that insulted the multi-cultured body by both indicating that their modes of expression were not just as valuable as his and by his insistence on making them write and grading their written work products. To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/