As I read chapters 6 and 7 I found myself feeling more and more stressed out and overwhelmed. There are so many little rules and phrases. It seems impossible to memorize them all and keep them sorted out in my mind. The who/whom rule, the whose/who rule, contractions, prepositions, conjunctions, the list never ends. After I stressed out for awhile and felt like all hope was lost I remembered something I had read in a previous chapter. I don't remember the exact words but the idea was that we are already experts in the English language. We use it every single day. We read, we write, we speak, and we dream in the English language. Once I stepped back and thought about it like this I was able to get things into perspective. As I did the homework I quit worrying about every single little rule and just thought about how I would say something or write something. It is impossible to be right every time and I still need a lot of practice but I did realize that a large majority of the time I could get it right. I have read some other blogs on here where they have felt the same way but when you get stressed out remember that you have been practicing the English language for years. Even the book says that the most important part of what we are learning is getting the ideas down and understanding how to use them, not remembering every single little phrase and rule. So stay calm and stick with it.
Editing Mistake
I received this picture in an email the other day.
This lady needs to make English her "offical" language if she is going to protest it.
I do the same thing with writing. I write the way I talk first, then I go back and make it grammatically correct.
ReplyDeleteYour editing mistake this week is classic! We should all make sure we're grammatically in the clear if we are going to make such public declarations of our opinions or we risk embarrassing not only ourselves, but our cause as well.
ReplyDelete