English in all its Confusations

Class last Wednesday was pretty interesting, I must say. It was difficult at times for me to properly identify which words represented what parts of speech. I think that the problem was that I would read a word in one of the sentences and then search for it on the class handout. Unfortunately, some of the words belonged to several different parts of speech, and that really confused me. It seems like that is a state I am prone to fall into when I work on the technical aspects of English.

It's great that we're going over the parts of speech in class. I definitely need this review. The approach that we're taking, I think, is also very effective and entertaining. Since we, as students, made the sentences ourselves, we're automatically more interested in understanding them. It's almost like we're coming to understand ourselves... in a very linguist-hippie kind of way.

While tutoring at the WC the other day, I felt less confident about myself concerning the rules of grammar than I have in the past. I think that this is because some of my previous ideas of 'good' and 'bad' English are being redefined by what I'm reading in the Grammar Snob. She includes so many rules, exceptions, and disputations concerning rules that it's difficult to know what to tell students, especially when they turn to me for direction. Perhaps this humility is a good thing, though, and I'll now be able to build up confidence based on a more contemporary and comprehensive understanding of the rules and conventions of English.

I found several parts of the Grammar Snob to be very helpful and entertaining. The explanation of the differences between 'that' and 'which' was good to hear. For a long time I have been confused about when and how exactly to use which one. I also liked the chapter that talks about Jeopardy because I knew that rule about quotation marks and, therefore, felt somewhat smart for a bit.