Me, Feeling like a Grammar Snobbee

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this book. It did feel like a guilty pleasure to read it at times, though, because she's so outright rude to quite a few folks. Her meanness is rather humorous, so I guess that's a redeeming feature. Another thing I like about it is the fact that the chapters are so short. It makes the thoughts more manageable for me, and I can organize them in my mind better. (It also made me feel like I was reading it a lot faster than I really was.) Her use of anecdotes served as perfect introductions, illustrations, and conclusions for the various points she made. The only thing I have to say against the book is that it wasn't crystal clear about some of the rules and actual lessons she was trying to teach. Sometimes, she made perfect sense, but sometimes I had to read a section several times before I grasped the concept she was trying to convey. The titles and sub-titles were also good and attention-getting. Overall, I like it.

Class today was enlightening... and condemning. I'd forgotten how much I didn't know about English grammar. I was starting to get the idea that I didn't know a lot when I tutored two ESL students last week at the Writing Center and then tutored a few middle school kids at a local Baptist Church. I think that both of those groups of people know more than I do about the topics we covered today. Sometime, I really need to just buckle down and read a technical English book. "Grammar Snobs" is wonderful, but I wonder if it covers everything (or at least most things) I don't know. It's my hope that if I will actually do that and then work a lot with those struggling middle school students on their English assignments, I'll be able to be where I need to be as for as grammatical knowledge is concerned. We'll see what happens.