Text 28270, 87 rader
Skriven 2012-04-26 04:36:25 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
  Kommentar till text 28262 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Fidonews
================
24 Apr 12 12:06, Robert Bashe wrote to Roy Witt:

 RB> Roy Witt wrote to Ross Cassell on Monday April 23 2012 at 05:22:

 RW>> I learned English by listening to my parents. I also learned bad
 RW>> grammar from them and my friends along the way. All of that was
 RW>> corrected in English 101 classes during middle school. The first and
 RW>> best thing I learned was that I learned how to spell phonetically,
 RW>> so I don't always need a spell checker. I do use a dictionary every
 RW>> now and then, but you have to know how to spell a word before you
 RW>> can use a dictionary.

 RB> Same with me, except I _really_ learned English by force(!) thanks to
 RB> a long-dead English professor at Texas Tech (a little hunch-backed
 RB> and white-haired man) named Alan Strout.

Ninth grade English was a required (graduation credit) class in public
speaking. What got to me sometimes was the teacher's habit of sitting in
the speaker's (i.e. mine) desk and waving a hand in the air with two
fingers up and thumb across the folded middle two fingers, which indicated
'Bull-Shit' in his class.

Many, many years later I'm amused that the same 'Bull-Shit' sign is used
by students at a certain Texas college, aka the "Longhorns" to indicate
that they're full of BS too. 8^)

 RB> He gave two grades to every paper: one for content and the other for
 RB> spelling. In the first few weeks in his course, I often enough got an
 RB> "A" for content and an "F" for spelling. And I thought I was pretty
 RB> good at the time ;-)

Heh...He sounds like my 9th grade Algebra teacher. A nervous little man
who stood before the class with one leg twitching under him. Fat framed
thick glasses and a smile that reminded me of a movie actor who smiled in
the same manner. His name was Mr Allen and he gave me my first ever 'A' in
any math class up to that point in time.

 RB> After that, I often enough spent nights looking up every word except
 RB> "a", "and" and "the" in the dictionary. I hated the guy when I was in
 RB> his course, but have nothing but praise for what he did for me with
 RB> regard to English spelling.

Other than the required reading materials and subsequent book reports, I
very seldom took any English studies home. If you recall, there were the
works of such writers as the bardolator Shakespeare and others like him
that were usually required reading.

But there were also comic book versions of that crap that better served to
show my contempt for such writers. It was a blast to watch the look of the
teacher as I read my reports in front of the class. 8^)

My favorite was a poem that I liked to mime: Little Bo Peep.

Little Bo Peep has lost here sheep and doesn't know where to find them.

If Bo Peep lost her sheep, then of course she wouldn't know where to find
them.

Leave them alone and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them.

Leave them alone! What else can she do? She has lost them!

Leave them alone and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them:

Unless they're walking in reverse!

And on and on...

 RB> Dr. Alan Strout, formerly (he thought this very important) from
 RB> Dartmouth ;-)

Dartmouth of MA?

 RB> RIP. He was a good man.

Weren't they all.


                R\%/itt


  ... Only those who will risk going too far can possibly
  ... find out how far one can go ~ TS Eliot


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