Failing of teachers and parents

Post #126,851 by orion 11/20/03 2:15:40 PM Reply	Failing of teachers and parents My father is a poor speller, my mother isn't that much better. I never got any help from them on homework anyway, I always had to do it myself and try and teach myself. Teachers never did seem to have an interest in helping me do better in English, only told me that I did it wrong, but not the right way to do it. So I got red pencil and red pens scratching my mistakes, but never what the corrected way would be. I was never encouraged to do better or even helped to learn to do better. Many students were just like me anyway, so it seemed normal for the teachers to do that. We were told that we would never improve and would have bad English skills our whole lives. *"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"*
Post #126,853 by Nightowl 11/20/03 2:18:26 PM Reply	Re: Failing of teachers and parents Many students were just like me anyway, so it seemed normal for the teachers to do that. We were told that we would never improve and would have bad English skills our whole lives. To some degree, I agree with that, although my mom worked hard with me on my reading and spelling and vocabulary, so I was good at that one. But my grammar was so bad my English teacher told me that I would NEVER become a writer, which infuriated me to no end. When I finally learned grammar later, and got my first poem published, I mailed a copy of it to her with a note, "Never say Never." Nightowl >8# "The difference between being immature and child-like is that one is what you are, and one is what you choose to be." Comment by Nightowl {O,O}
Post #126,951 by jake123 11/20/03 9:17:03 PM Reply	Like I said the best way to improve it is to read a lot of good proper english. Read some novels. They are both entertaining and educational (at least, they are if they're actually good novels). Read some Heinlen: his English is impeccable and he's a good storyteller. LOtR is another good one for high entertainment value and great English. Go see some Shakespeare; while it's not the same as Modern English, it's fantastic English, and when performed well his plays are amazing. Go get some Branagh and some Olivier productions of Shakespeare on film; I really liked Olivier's production of Henry V. When I was learning French, I read French newspapers (Le Journal de Montréal, La Presse, sometimes Le Devoir) every day. It was very slow going at first, but after a year or two I could read almost everything I wanted to at quite a decent clip. It also helped my verbal comprehension a lot, and even my ability to speak because I was getting a handle on how verbs worked. --\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca \n [link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] [link\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] \n Kingston Ontario Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #127,034 by Silverlock 11/21/03 10:00:39 AM Reply	Good advice The more you read, the more you get exposed to the written word, the better you will write. ----------------------------------------- It is much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why? Because it is easier to give someone the finger than it is to give them a helping hand. Mike Royko

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