Degenerate English Professors

[The Dude]

All the recent talk about how poor the average person's English skills are reminded me of something. It was my first year in college, and I was taking English 101. The professor gave us an assignment at the end of the first class - "come back on Thursday having written a sentance that includes all seven parts of speech. I'm not going to tell you what they are, that's part of the assignment."

Now, I'm not sure if anybody else in the class picked up on it, but I wouldn't really expect them to know. I did, however, expect the instructor to know that there are eight parts of speech. Hmm, standards have dropped haven't they?

Well anyway, I decided to make the assignment a little interesting for myself and and do it in exactly eight words (bonus point to anyone who can do the same). I did just that, and came back the next class with my sentance. The next week when I got the assignment back, she had marked me off for not having an adjective. I took the paper to her, pointed out the word 'the,' and asked her why she marked me off. She said "the isn't really an adjective, it's an article."

I couldn't believe it! I asked her what part of speech an article was, if it wasn't an adjective. We argued for a couple of minutes, and she finally conceded when I brought her a dictionary, looked up the word 'the,' and pointed out that Webster identifies it as an adjective.

I couldn't believe that a college English professor could be like that. Needless to say, I've learned a lot about college since then.

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
and came back the next class with my sentance.

[/ QUOTE ]


don't you mean sentence?

haha.. one thing to make sure of, when you're making a post like that, gotta make sure you spell everything correctly /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[The Dude]

Well done, my friend. You should be an English professor.

[wacki]

lol, great post! Both of you made me laugh.

[daryn]

actually that is pretty sad (the point of your original post). i learned stuff like that in middle school, and learned it right! college has gone way downhill.

i'm under the impression that some people just go to college nowadays simply because they feel they "have to".

for instance when i was at UMass, i would estimate that 25% of the student body should not have been enrolled in college.

[Sponger15SB]

your An idiot,

[The Dude]

Come on, guys. Are none of you English experts able to construct said sentence?

[Tyler Durden]

[ QUOTE ]
Come on, guys. Are none of you English experts able to construct said sentence?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's possible, but more likely is that we've got lives.

Okay back to my toenail collection!

[Blarg]

Smart salemen quickly sell it with lies and exaggeration.

Sorry, but I got tired of trying to move things around and shorten it to seven words.

[daryn]

where's your interjection blarg?

[The Dude]

You missed an interjection, but that's easy enough to add in there. But you also have three nouns and no pronouns.

[maryfield48]

[ QUOTE ]
You missed an interjection, but that's easy enough to add in there. But you also have three nouns and no pronouns.

[/ QUOTE ]

In light of the smug tone of your original post, I'm surprised that you don't recognize "it" as a pronoun.

[The Dude]

Ha ha, I completely missed 'it' in the sentence. I counted 8 words! Oh well. Maybe this is why I don't teach this stuff in college.

[Blarg]

An interjection is not one of the seven parts of speech.

[Blarg]

An interjection is not one of the seven parts of speech. The pronoun is the word "it." And yes, I have more than one noun. I got tired of trying to find a way to get a conjunction in there without doubling up either nouns or verbs or prounouns.

Noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, conjunction, preposition.

[tripdad]

[ QUOTE ]
your An idiot,

[/ QUOTE ]

you're. as in " you are an idiot"

cheers!

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
An interjection is not one of the seven parts of speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

ok so.. did you read the initial post in this thread?

[kyro]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
your An idiot,

[/ QUOTE ]

you're. as in " you are an idiot"

cheers!

[/ QUOTE ]

oh boy. you might want to check your sarcasm meter for fresh batteries.

[tripdad]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
your An idiot,

[/ QUOTE ]

you're. as in " you are an idiot"

cheers!

[/ QUOTE ]

my meter is fine. it's my detector that is on the fritz!

cheers!


oh boy. you might want to check your sarcasm meter for fresh batteries.

[/ QUOTE ]

[kyro]

eep. and where the hell was MY brain?

still cheering for the sox i guess /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]


In risposta di:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An interjection is not one of the seven parts of speech.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



ok so.. did you read the initial post in this thread?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm...there must be some point in a question that coy. It doesn't seem to make sense on its face. Obviously I did read the original post, and I accomplished the mission of putting a sentence together with those seven parts of speech. I did miss out on the extra credit, though. Are you joking that you were expecting one of the usual interjections in my sentence that I often spike them with? Your mentioning an interjection at all as one of the seven parts of speech seemed like you were joking to me, but then just weird to me when the original poster mistakenly went along and agreed that it was one of them.

Well I'm getting nowhere but more confused the more I think about it, so I'd better stop before I forget my own name or something.

[daryn]

http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/partsp.html

[mmbt0ne]

[ QUOTE ]
Come on, guys. Are none of you English experts able to construct said sentence?

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, he and the dog ran quickly there.

Does this cover it? Honest question, because I haven't had an English class in a while. I did end the sentence with a preposition though, which is poor form.

[Michael Davis]

I just graded papers and the highest in the class was a B-. People cannot write.

-Michael

[The Dude]

You cannot end a sentence with a preposition. It's against the rules.

[Pirc Defense]

[ QUOTE ]
I just graded papers and the highest in the class was a B-. People cannot write.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whew! I don't envy you, brother. I can picture the cringes you made while reading some of the choice "styles" you surely came across in those papers. Michael Davis has as good a vantage point as anyone to observe the state of Americans' writing skills; he not only teaches this stuff to his students, but then gets to personally see how little of it is retained.

Don't envy you at all.

[The Dude]

Hey, quietly jump over the rail and me.

[Blarg]

As Churchill said, "A dangling preposition is something up with which I will not put!"

[Blarg]

You and that site snuck an 8th one in there. I've never seen the parts of speech defined that way. Perhaps because an interjection can be a phrase or a clause. The OP did ask for the standard seven, though.

[daryn]

check more sites.. oh and go back and reread the original post. the dude himself mentions that there are eight.

[Michael Davis]

I just looked through a bunch of sites and some of them left off interjection, while others listed articles as parts of speech. I, too, learned the eight parts of speech, but I hardly think that arguing about any of these things either way is evidence of incompetence. Unless a person truly failed to realize that an article was just a particular type of adjective.

-Michael

[PITTM]

i graduate from college this year and i couldnt do that assignment, bummer.

rj

[John Cole]

"the isn't really an adjective, it's an article."

What part of speech is it in this sentence? /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[The Dude]

'the' is used as a noun in that sentence.

[John Cole]

Very good. So, is "the" a noun or adjective? You see the point, Dude.

[daryn]

depends on the usage clearly

[The Dude]

there are countless examples of words that can be used as different parts of speech. In the sentence I submitted to her (a similar one is posted a few spots above), it was clearly an adjective.

[SomethingClever]

I've been a professional writer for 5 years and I don't know half of the rules.

But I know when I'm breaking them. Such as now.

[offTopic]

Was this ever a disappointing thread - I thought it was going to be something along the lines of "Aqualung".

[Cerril]

Oddly enough, that's one of the things I really liked about going to a community college. More than some more typical colleges, the people there tend to be there to learn. I happened to not go to the standard transfer location from my high school so I was there with a lot of people who were there for continuing education.

Of course, the GE courses had their share of people who were there because that's where you're supposed to go after high school, but it was a lot better -than- high school.

Incidentally, that's the main reason I've decided I could never be a teacher - I couldn't handle trying to teach people who aren't interested in learning.

[BottlesOf]

[ QUOTE ]
She said "the isn't really an adjective, it's an article."

[/ QUOTE ]

While we're sort of on the subject, you missed a great opportunity to use single quotation marks. Those are fun.

(You may want to apply capital letters and commas more liberally as well.)

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
Oddly enough, that's one of the things I really liked about going to a community college. More than some more typical colleges, the people there tend to be there to learn.

[/ QUOTE ] I am still at CC(damn part time school /images/graemlins/laugh.gif), but I have had more than my share of peer editing assignments for English classes, and during every single one, I ask myself, "am I the teacher?" I hate peer editing,