Thursday, August 26, 2010

I stink/stank/have stunk at grammar

Today I schooled my kids, graded every paper, recorded all the grades, filed all the papers in carefully organized notebooks, and filled out the attendance records the state requires. I went over several grammar concepts with K as she has a test tomorrow and she's having trouble with a few things. Like...

1. sneaked vs. snuck. Did you know that sneaked is the proper word? snuck has slowly worked its way from the kind of slang only backwoods idiots use to accepted English. At least according to the dictionary. So you can use snuck now, but not if you want to traditional about it. It's like "catsup" is now "ketchup" and "doughnut" is now "donut".

2. layed vs. laid and payed vs paid. Those darn irregular verbs and their irregular spellings. Rebels. Juvenile delinquents. They're too cool to follow the rules.

3. has drunk and would have sung. Just the phrase "past participle" makes my eyes glaze over. And I majored in English.

4. Pr, P, PrP, PP. Those are the answers the worksheet wanted her to write indicating if the verb or verb phrase was Present, Past, Present Participle, or Past Participle. Could you remember which one to write for which? Heck, could you even identify a past participle if it hit you over the head?

Thankfully, I had the foresight to purchase the teacher guide with the answers, because I have to check it myself all the time to make sure I'm teaching it correctly.

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