Friday, September 21, 2012

FANBOYS...Not just for female pop groups anymore.

Once again I am faced with the question of what I have learned, BUT I would rather speak about what I've attempted to learn. I am still struggling with parts of sentences, but I feel that my knowledge has grown. BECAUSE Barbara highlighted the verbs within the sentences we had created on Tuesday, everything seems a little clearer for me now. It is easier for me to recognize a linking verb now because I finally understand that what comes after it is directly related to describing the subject. ALTHOUGH intransitive verbs have always come a little more easily for me, given they have the capability to complete the sentence without the use of an object or clause, I didn't know their actual name. I guess that's something else I've been attempting to learn this week--keeping track of all the vocabulary associated with the parts of a sentence. Some things I still have trouble remembering on a regular basis are adverbs (those scare me), particles, prepositions, and prepositional phrases. I hope to one day successfully have those down and to never ever EVER forget them!

I lied. I do want to talk about what I've learned. Haha.

I had never really thought about what young children go through while learning to write, OR the impact one person (their teacher) could have on their progress. Since we started reading the article on Dora, I've thought a lot about what Dora must have been feeling herself. What could possibly be working its way through the mind of a 5-7 year old as they move from one stage to the next in the writing process? How receptive are they to verbal and visual tools and cues given to them during this transitioning period? Does anyone ever really stop improving their writing? These questions kept popping into my mind while reading, causing me to think about the learning process from the other side. I don't remember my own learning process, BUT just thinking outside of the box could help me understand what future students are going through. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've learned that thinking outside of the box can be a great thing when your goal in life is to teach others.

One last thing I learned this week that more or less left me giggling is that acronyms can be hilarious. FANBOYS and AAAWWUBBIS is probably one of the funniest things I've come across this semester in any of my classes, AND I'm reading both Beowolf and The Iliad. There's comic gold in both of those works. I don't expect to remember the words associated with AAAWWUBBIS, BUT I will always remember that it creates a subordinate clause (and then giggle at how funny it sounds).

5 comments:

  1. Your title to your blog really made me laugh and I found it to be very clever. You did a really fantastic job emphasizing on what you have learned thus far in this class, and you have a sense of humor that makes me want to read each of your blogs. Although, I noticed that you did not fulfill the requirements for the pattern of the week. It appears that you attempted to use FANBOYS and there are also some subordinate words here, but you failed to use all the FANBOYS. The ones that you forgot to use were FOR, NOR, YET, and SO. I also was not able to find your three sentences for AAAWWUBBIS; maybe they are there and I'm just blind, but the less I did not see them. If they are there then could you maybe put them in bold. Sorry I'm not trying to put you down, but only trying to help. Still friends?

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    1. Evan, EVAN... you did the ALTHOUGH, thing...
      for shame ;-)

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    2. Sorry I used to write for the newspaper before I came into the English department and am still transitioning over.

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  2. You got some of the patterns down, but left out some of them as Evan said in the comment above. I especially liked the sentence starting with FANBOYS in the last paragraph. I also could not find all the AAAWWUBBIS sentences but then again I know I am not the best grammatical student out there so there is a good chance I missed them. On a positive note you convey humor very well in your writing which makes it enjoyable to read.

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    1. David, you have lots of good ol' compound sentences in your response, but alas! no commas...

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