Sunday, January 26, 2014

Why I Retired from the Grammar Policeforce


One of my favourite grammar memories involves beer and a sharpie. My best girlfriend and I were at our local, drinking $2 pitchers of Bud Light on a Friday after work. We both noticed that in the bathroom, someone had written, "Where my bitches?". We could not let this travesty pass, so wrote under, "Where's your verb?" to which some genius replied, "Where my bitches at?" It was a magical moment, one we were able to relive every Friday as we voided our bladders of cheap swill.

So this title may seem strange coming from someone who corrects graffiti in dive bars, who studied English at university and has been teaching its finer points for the last 18 years. And even stranger from someone who is required to specifically teach grammar 10 hours a week.


I used to get riled up by the incorrect use of your/you're and the abuse of other homophones. Using "less" before a countable noun once made me batty. I delighted in the uproarious results when the Oxford comma wasn't used. And I cared a great deal when people threw out a flippant "I could care less".


There was a time I could spend hours debating the finer points of grammar such as the subtle difference in meaning between "He likes to dance" and "He likes dancing" or how to add a tag question to "He must have had a good time.".



But then I became an ESL teacher and found that I was overjoyed if a student could use "you're" and "your" at all. A typical  exchange with an elementary level  student can go something like this:

Me: Who do you live with?
Student: Your family.
Me: You live with my family? (pointing to myself and then pointing to the student) No, your family.
Student: Yes, your family.

And it will go on for ages like a 'Who's on First?' sketch.


Once upon a time in graduate school, I spent hours in a classroom debating the nuances of grammar that matter to about 11 people and then later writing papers about it. I regarded English as both an art and a science and revelled in its complexity and intricacy.



I remember very distinctly the white hot anger I felt when my Thai colleagues had typos on their English grammar tests. I felt it was an injustice to the language and an insult to the English majors. I spoke passionately to them about how careful and thorough they should be when using MY language. As if it were a Faberge egg that would break at the first lack of subject-verb agreement. Every time they forgot or misused the particle in a phrasal verb ("wait me downstairs"; "take care yourself"; "pass away the salt"), I cringed and felt a piece of the egg stab me in the heart.

                                        

But over time, though I still enjoyed a grammar challenge, I lightened the hell up (notice my use of a phrasal verb, but what is "the hell"? Not an object. Adverb? Does anyone care?). If I were to get annoyed at every grammar mistake I encountered on a daily basis, I would need therapy (notice my correct use of the subjunctive there). For my own sanity, I had to make the transition from always seeing right and wrong to analysing what is most important to survival in an English speaking country or when dealing with English speakers. Survival rests solely on the ability to communicate and be understood and not necessarily on correctly placing a preposition or even using the correct preposition, for that matter. And let's be honest. English is a difficult language filled with exceptions to most rules. To correct EVERY mistake a student makes in writing or speaking (especially mistakes with grammar points they haven't learned) would be a soul-crusher for them. So at times, I've had to put the Grammar Police badge aside and focus on the fundamentals of the language they need most.

                           

A major difference between Grammar Me now and Grammar Me then is that I no longer see every rule in English grammar as having equal weight. And I no longer feel my blood boil when I see mistakes, especially those that don't impact the overall meaning. I can calmly and coolly point out the error without stabbing the paper with my correcting pen. One topic that carries a lot of weight in speaking and writing is verb tense. Consider the question, "How long you stay in Thailand?". I heard this question a dozen times a week and I always had to go through the long difficult process of extracting the meaning from the nice person who was just trying to have small talk. "Do you mean how long have I stayed in Thailand so far or do you mean how long am I going to stay from this point forward?" It was maddening and I always felt like an asshole afterwards. Or when a student feels they need to maintain the same verb tense throughout a written paragraph. "My sister was born in 1979. Her name was Lisa". What? She's dead? I'm so sorry.

                                   

Now don't get me wrong. I do teach all the grammar rules that are appropriate at any given level, of course. At the elementary level, students learn basic verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, correct use of articles, prepositions of place and time, etc.  At the more advanced levels, students study more complex grammar like 3rd conditional sentences (If I had known the level of English I would be teaching, I would have never studied for a Masters degree.); negative adverbials (Hardly had I opened the wine, when the dinner started burning.); cleft sentences (What Tom hopes to do is never talk about correct grammar again.); participle clauses (Having arrived late for work smelling of booze, Jack was given a stern verbal warning.); etc. We grammar teachers focus on accuracy and fluency in written and spoken communication fairly equally and do error correction in a  variety of ways. Oh, but how I could go on and on about all the little frustrations that come with teaching the minutiae of such a crazy language. I really feel for the students at times. Don't even get me started on pronunciation (which is actually more important than grammar, but that's another post).



 
 I know at least one of the five people who read this will think, "But she's talking about non-native speakers. Those memes are about people who use English as their first and likely only language. If anyone should be able to follow the rules, it's certainly those nimrods." And how true. If you use a sub-standard level  of English, people make assumptions about your education and intelligence level. Facebook status updates that are unpunctuated gibberish riddled with errors do bother me. I once would have studied the update and mentally calculated the errors. But you see--now I don't even bother to read them at all. I still feel the pang of annoyance when I see a sign that says, "Your in America. Learn English". And I still get a chuckle when I see one that says, "Sausage's for sale". I still notice every single error (you can't turn it off), but because of what I do on a daily basis, it doesn't make as much of an impact as it once did. So while I can't say, "I couldn't care less", I certainly do care less. And while it hasn't made me more careless, it certainly doesn't entitle me to a Grammar Police badge.


 
 
 

Saturday, January 25, 2014

I Had Myself A Merry Little Christmas

Talbot Street

For the first time since Christmas 2008, I was in an English speaking country to celebrate the holidays. Not only an English speaking country, but a country that celebrates Christmas (i.e., predominantly Christian). China and Thailand have caught the commercial fever of lights, Santa grottos, and shopping, but there is something lacking in the overall spirit in these places. Not to mention that in Thailand, it's 32/90 degrees on Christmas just like every other day of the year. So here are some things that made this particular year special.

 
1. City Sidewalks
Every major shopping street on both sides of the Liffey River was awash in the glow from strung lights, Christmas trees, and store window displays. Because I go for a run well  before sunrise,  I was  able to see the lights every morning and feel a bit of Christmas magic. I've never lived in any city that works so hard to create such a festive and elaborate setting.
window display Henry Street

2. Shopping
I was the last person to be hired at my school so the first to be "laid off" as students drifted away to their home countries for the holidays. So instead of finishing on December 20 like the other teachers, I was given the heave-ho ho ho on December 13. This gave me an extra week to do some shopping. In the past, I was limited in my shopping venues. China has a lot of stuff for sale, but it is mostly crap found at EuroGiant and the Dollar Tree or in overpriced hippy stores selling colourful bags, incense, and  iron-on patches with marijuana leaves (I've  never actually seen these ironed on anything). Last year, I bought all my gifts on Amazon, but it felt like cheating.

O'Connell Street

So this last Christmas, I wandered in and out of all the nooks and crannies of Dublin I could, seeking out the perfect gifts. The days were bright and sunny, carollers were out, men in gaudy Christmas jumpers were beginning their Twelve Pubs of Christmas crawls, and different locations had Christmas markets selling locally made food and crafts. The city was absolutely abuzz with Christmas energy. I wasn't happy with all the gifts I bought, but I loved the process.

Moore Street-where you can get fresh meat, veg, and fruit, hair extensions, and SIM cards


gifts disguised in boxes
Speaking of gifts. I don't know if all Americans do this, but my family always wraps gifts in leftover boxes like the boxes shoes and irons come in. I bought S's cousin a lovely silk tie and to hide its tie shape, I put it in the box that once contained the Christmas lights bought at Eurogiant. I  noticed later that the box had been unwrapped but unopened. I explained the tradition and the cousin seemed pleased with the "real" gift. But to imagine him sitting there a good 30 minutes thinking I bought him Christmas lights! Ha!


3. Being Home for Christmas
The main attraction for Christmas is spending it with your inner circle. This was my fifth Christmas with Stephen but my first with one of our families and our first as a married couple. S and his brother's family gathered at their parents house for the day and we enjoyed the relaxed chit chat. Children don't hide their joy at having presents (like adults do), so it was great fun to see them tear through their packages and signal their "thumbs up" by playing with something for longer than 2 minutes.

Sean uses a gift to deliver beer to Daddy

Christmas Dinner is one of my favourite parts of the day. Paul made a lovely lemongrass coconut soup before the main event. Turkey and stuffing (strange to have on Dec. 25, I know), baked ham, and roasted potatoes and vegetables, all covered in gravy if desired. Followed by trifle and Christmas pudding. Christmas pudding is this crazy fruit cake concoction made weeks in advance and soaked in booze. It's wonderful.

Ciaran enjoys pre-dinner sausages from Munich. The sausages were later stolen and consumed by the dogs.


4. St. Stephen's Day
Everything is closed on Christmas Day, so on Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas, St. Stephen's Day, people go to the pubs to drink as if they've been in a desert for a year. Perhaps because of this tendency towards excess or because the publicans need time off too, the pubs are only open a few hours on Dec. 26. We took a long uphill walk to the Summit in Howth, had a pint next to the fireplace in the Abbey Tavern and then met Stephen's parents in their local. The place was packed and everyone was in good form.

pre-pint walk to Howth Summit


5. Godfatherhood
When I moved to Istanbul in September, 2009 S was also there with his university friend from Ireland, Richie and his American wife, Kim. The four of us hung out a few times and then said our goodbyes the following February when we left for Poland and have stayed in touch since. While S and I were drifting from one country to the next, Richie and Kim stayed in Istanbul and had two beautiful sons: Liam Ulysses and Frederick Seneca. S was asked to be Fred's  godfather and so we went to Templemore (about an hour from Dublin by train) to be part of the christening. Templemore is a beautiful little town in Irish dairy country.

Stephen, Kim, Fred, Richie, Freida (Richie's sister and Fred's godmother)

I have no idea where I'll be the next Christmas. Estonia, Malaysia, and Mexico seem just as likely as Dublin given the unpredictability of the ESL industry. So I'll hold on to the memory of this Christmas which was as Christmas as Christmas gets.

Henry Street at night

Two of my gifts from S

Christmas morning walk through St. Anne's Park

one of us is happy with this arrangement

Maura and the Sausage Thiefs

Teaching monkeys to read is hard work

Sean seems unsure about this gift

view outside of Abbey Tavern in Howth

The christening

not a typical picture for this set of Clarkes

park in Templemore

Templemore

some of my favourite gifts. I found the pots on the right near the bins in my apartment building!

Henry Street at sunrise

real live carollers!

Christmas market at the Docklands. I got there too early...