rock paper scissors

[spin13]

I got tired of the 27 year old engineers I teach playing Rock, Paper, Scissors -- I thought it was too childish -- so I taught them Odds and Evens, instead. International engineering at its best! Don't worry, it isn't like these people design bridges and water mains...

As if the decline of the written English language among native speakers wasn't bad enough, we've also got ESL students who couldn't talk their way out of a wet paper bag (as if that would ever be necessary...) who use internet jargon, abbreviations, and otherwise the bottom-dredges of the bastard child of human laziness and stupidity when it comes to spelling.

"You don't even know the difference between 'your,' 'you're,' and 'yore'! Why are you spelling it 'ur?'"

And that's directed at everybody. Stupid Americans...

<All emoticons deleted by The Coalition for the Remote Possibility of a Literate 21st Century>

Sincerely yours,
-Eric

[Dehitay]

LMAO, I'll admit that bad grammar is annoying, but you guys are hilarious. Like old men who are scared to hell of change. I'm gonna go play on your lawns >=P

[Mike Cash]

Dehitay wrote:
LMAO, I'll admit that bad grammar is annoying, but you guys are hilarious. Like old men who are scared to hell of change. I'm gonna go play on your lawns >=P

We just find it hard to LOL at the LCD.

[flammable hippo]

ex:
"If I would have seen you I would have run." instead of "If I had seen you I would have run."

I think it should be "If I had seen you, I would have rAn".

Just a thought.

[Mike Cash]

flammable hippo wrote:

ex:
"If I would have seen you I would have run." instead of "If I had seen you I would have run."

I think it should be "If I had seen you, I would have rAn".

Just a thought.

My regionalistic slip is showing.

[zengargoyle]

AJBryant wrote:
The thing is, (1) they don't teach grammar anymore here, and (2) no one cares about it because if 2+2=5 is officially 'a nice try', then something like "had run" is officially 'good enough.'

Weep for the language, my friend. Weep for its death.

Tony

weep for all learning, not just the language. the whole "no child left behind" idea has left America's educational system crippled and brought everybody down to the lowest common denominator. i've worked at a University for the past 8 years or so, and i get to meet and interview the new Work-Study applicants each year, and each year they get stupider and stupider. the paranoid in me sees that the governments plan is working, create a population of ingnorant sheep to believe anything that they're told...

in the past, students who didn't learn what was reqired each year of their education were failed... they had to take the year of education over and over until they learned what was required. in my high school there were plenty of students who were kept behind, my next door neighbor was two years older than me but was still in the grade behind me because he had not learned what was required. nowadays education is all about getting everybody to pass every year, so the requirements are lowered until everybody can pass the standardized test. (i only remember having one standardized test sometime during the middle of high school, now it seems that they have them every year and the only things they are allowed to learn are things that will be on the test ).

so it's not only language that is being destroyed, it's history and government and science and everything else... the students leaving high school nowadays have the equivalent of an 8th grade education in my days. they are suited for nothing but mediocrity. my little sister went to the same school as i did, had the same classes and the same teachers, but somehow came out of the experience with much less learning. i fear the day i have kids of my own and have to figure out how to get them a real education and not the **** that the US educational system churns out nowadays.

[keatonatron]

Mike Cash wrote:

flammable hippo wrote:

ex:
"If I would have seen you I would have run." instead of "If I had seen you I would have run."

I think it should be "If I had seen you, I would have rAn".

Just a thought.

My regionalistic slip is showing.

But "have run" is correct English. "Have ran" is another one of those things that should anger Mike.

[flammable hippo]

But "have run" is correct English. "Have ran" is another one of those things that should anger Mike.

Yeah, but the word "would" was added to the sentence. So it's not just "have verb" but "would have verb". Like with the verb to eat, you have I eat, I ate, I have eaten, I would have eaten. I think it sounds more natural to say that instead of "I would have ate." Idk, I might be wrong, but it just doesn't seem to fit right.

[tanuki]

Like with the verb to eat, you have I eat, I ate, I have eaten, I would have eaten.

It's just like that with "to run"! I run (every day), I ran (yesterday), I have run (a mile), I would have run (if it hadn't rained). "Run" is the past participle of "to run" (the words I bolded are the past participle, not the infinitive).

[Mike Cash]

tanuki wrote:

Like with the verb to eat, you have I eat, I ate, I have eaten, I would have eaten.

It's just like that with "to run"! I run (every day), I ran (yesterday), I have run (a mile), I would have run (if it hadn't rained). "Run" is the past participle of "to run" (the words I bolded are the past participle, not the infinitive).

If you use terms like "past participle" you'll only confuse every American here under the age of about 40. American schools no longer teach English grammar, or so I am told.

flammable hippo wrote:

But "have run" is correct English. "Have ran" is another one of those things that should anger Mike.

Yeah, but the word "would" was added to the sentence. So it's not just "have verb" but "would have verb". Like with the verb to eat, you have I eat, I ate, I have eaten, I would have eaten. I think it sounds more natural to say that instead of "I would have ate." Idk, I might be wrong, but it just doesn't seem to fit right.

You are wrong:

http://www.editfast.com/english/grammar/verbs/verb_rules_1.htm

[keatonatron]

Mike Cash wrote:
If you use terms like "past participle" you'll only confuse every American here under the age of about 40.

If they don't even have enough initiative to look it up in an online dictionary (if they don't already know the meaning), then who cares if they're confused or not?

[AJBryant]

If you use terms like "past participle" you'll only confuse every American here under the age of about 40. American schools no longer teach English grammar, or so I am told.

I know you don't like smilies, Mike, but sometimes they are the picture worth a thousand words:



Tony

[flammable hippo]

oo, ok, guess I was wrong. But schools still do teach grammar, just not so much in highschool. I'm in 10th grade and the last English lesson I had that actually focused on grammar was in 7th grade. Every once in a while teachers try to teach a little bit of grammar but only when/if they notice that most of the class doesn't know it.

[Mike Cash]

flammable hippo wrote:
oo, ok, guess I was wrong. But schools still do teach grammar, just not so much in highschool. I'm in 10th grade and the last English lesson I had that actually focused on grammar was in 7th grade. Every once in a while teachers try to teach a little bit of grammar but only when/if they notice that most of the class doesn't know it.

When I was in school, our English classes were divided up with half the year being spent on literature and half the year on grammar. That was from the 7th through 12th grades.

The internet makes it abundantly obvious to me that they no longer make much effort at teaching spelling either.

[paul_b]

Mike Cash wrote:
The internet makes it abundantly obvious to me that they no longer make much effort at teaching spelling either.

That's alright, I never made much effort to learn spelling.