Grammar Blog #3

It’s already the fifth week of school, and I am so happy. Mostly happy because I am an English major and that means I don’t have any tests! Anyway, the last week we have done several new things in grammar class including the Socratic Circle and sentence structure exercises.

Although the Socratic Circle was not as exciting as the uses of the F- word, it was still a good learning lesson. I learned that I didn’t like it. When I sat on the outside I felt like I had important things to say, but by the time I was on the inside my incredibly short attention span forced me to stop paying attention. The Socrates Circle is sometimes referred to as a fish bowl, unfortunately the fish bowl allowed my short attention span to resemble a gold fish. I also found that the other problem with the Socrates Circle was that sometimes a few students can take over the group and not allow others to talk. This is why I have always preferred small groups. I find that small groups give students more face to face interaction and forces students to pay attention.

Also the last week we worked with poetry magnets to learn about sentence structure. I must say this is one of the most entertaining English exercises I have ever done, and it will be used frequently in my classroom. Although my experience may have been more fun then other classmates as me and Carley made a country song that included entertaining lines such as, “Ugly woman are the reason I kill myself.” Overall along with being entertaining the learning experience was excellent as well. I feel like I understand direct objects, transitive verbs, and intransitive verbs a little better, and with practice I think I can completely understand them.

Although I said that I am beginning to understand direct objects, intransitive verbs, and transitive verbs a little better, I am still not confident enough to try to explain them in this blog (plus our last class was on Wednesday, and I tend to not think about school over the weekend), but does anyone have any methods they use to help memorize these and other grammar rules?