Back to class
After a very nice break I finally cracked the book for this quarter’s set of courses. I’m finishing up course work for my teaching certificate in Ohio. It has taken a lot longer than I originally anticipated. Last quarter I finished all of the graduate level general Education courses. Now I have a handful of content area courses to take. As someone who will one day be certified to teach grades 7-12 Language Arts (Speech, Communication, Journalism, and English) I need to complete a bunch of undergrad level courses that I never took during my time in college. One of the courses this semester is Modern American Usage. It’s a correspondence course through Brigham Young University.
I was dreading this course. The last thing I wanted was to spend my evenings being reminded of all the grammar mistakes I make. It is annoying enough when someone corrects your grammar, so I was not looking forward to spending $300+ to be taught the “correct” way to speak and write. Maybe its a continuation of my constant fight with putonghua. Craig Simons is the man!
So I was excited to find out that the course is set up to look at the ideas of English usage vs. grammar. Usage is the way people use the language whereas grammar is a little less well defined. As the professor explains, the forces that determine “correct usage” aren’t inherent in a language; rather they exist outside the language. They include the influences of age, place, situation, sex, and time period. An example I liked was that of “ain’t”. “Ain’t” was once an acceptable contraction for “am not.” However, English speakers began to extend the use of ain’t to other people: “I ain’t, you ain’t, my dog ain't, etc. Soon the usage got out of hand and the educated deemed the term improper. Now however, we’re forced to find another term, none of which sound much better. Today you can either say, “I’m going, aren’t I?” which make less sense than the original or “I’m going, am I not?” which sounds self-important. Other examples from University of Oregon.
Here I am celebrating the start of the new quarter. Looking good, ain’t I?
I was dreading this course. The last thing I wanted was to spend my evenings being reminded of all the grammar mistakes I make. It is annoying enough when someone corrects your grammar, so I was not looking forward to spending $300+ to be taught the “correct” way to speak and write. Maybe its a continuation of my constant fight with putonghua. Craig Simons is the man!
So I was excited to find out that the course is set up to look at the ideas of English usage vs. grammar. Usage is the way people use the language whereas grammar is a little less well defined. As the professor explains, the forces that determine “correct usage” aren’t inherent in a language; rather they exist outside the language. They include the influences of age, place, situation, sex, and time period. An example I liked was that of “ain’t”. “Ain’t” was once an acceptable contraction for “am not.” However, English speakers began to extend the use of ain’t to other people: “I ain’t, you ain’t, my dog ain't, etc. Soon the usage got out of hand and the educated deemed the term improper. Now however, we’re forced to find another term, none of which sound much better. Today you can either say, “I’m going, aren’t I?” which make less sense than the original or “I’m going, am I not?” which sounds self-important. Other examples from University of Oregon.
Here I am celebrating the start of the new quarter. Looking good, ain’t I?
posted by Adam at 10:19 PM
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