[This message was originally submitted by [log in to unmask] to the ATEG list ] To Mary Ann Black: I think we assume that there was a time when future English teachers all graduated with such matters as homonyms and punctuation firmly in hand. I suspect that this was never the case. I suspect that new teachers learned these things on the job, in the process of "teaching" them, and then assumed that they had always known them. In my job, I often see the work of experienced teachers of my generation, and I'm surprised at what they still don't know. There are a lot, for example, who don't spell "definite" correctly. And I'm sure that I do know my homonyms, but I'm always finding myself using that wrong "there" and "its." In addition, I have experimented numerous times with trying to teach one of my teacher-education classes to correct an error that most of them make. I even tell them that I'm going to do it, and I bet them that they will fail to learn what I'm trying to teach. Sometimes it's to put their periods and commas before the quotation marks, and other times it's to use apostrophes for possession correctly. Usually they do fail to learn whatever I choose to "teach." I hope to make this a lesson in humility for them, but it often fails to take. I had one student this semester who wrote a rubric saying that students must use apostrophes correctly, even though I had pointed out several times that she herself was clueless on the topic. On a brighter note, I chose to teach my grammar class to spell "definite." On the midterm, when I asked them to explain a bit about definite articles, 24 of the 25 students misspelled the word. On the final, only one did. Of course, several contrived to write about articles without using either "definite" or "indefinite," which is pretty hard to do. I call that a magnificent copying mechanism. Bill McCleary >[This message was originally submitted by [log in to unmask] to the ATEG >list] > >Future teachers of English need to know some basic elements that, I'm sorry >to >say, many of them do not know. For example, please make sure they have the >homonyms straightened out --their, there, they're; its, i'ts; your, you're, >etc. >They also should have some idea about correct punctuation, particularly >commas >and the poor misunderstood apostrophe. Undrstanding agreement >(verb/subject >and pronoun/antecedent) and correct pronoun use would be helpful. Truly >many >of the usage problems we see everyday we see in new teachers. I sometimes >wonder if we're beating a dead horse here. After all, these new teachers >are >college graduates; maybe their misuse and lack of understanding of the >language is not such a big issue in the "real" world. Don' t you wonder? I >do >feel like a dinosaur sometimes. >Mary Ann Black William J. McCleary Associate Prof. of English Coordinator of Secondary English 3247 Bronson Hill Road SUNY at Cortland Livonia, NY 14487 607-753-2076 716-346-6859 [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]