Job Discussion Forums

[furiousmilksheikali]

[Glenski]

broman wrote:

[broman]

A few points for Glenski and some other thoughts on the subject....

1) American English comes from the British Isles. "Ain't", a popular American contraction, began in London. Because an aspect of language originated somewhere else doesn't mean it hasn't been current in the US at some time.

2) In a previous post I indicated seeing the contraction in the work of novelist Raymond Chandler, who's about as Amercian as apple pie. The novel was from the 40s, way before my time and very likely before yours too.

3) Yes, I agree, some very old textbooks indeed. But, having worked in public education, I do not put it past possiblity for a school to be using textbooks from just after the occupation, or the other possiblity I mentioned, to have some wizened guru local junior high English teacher insisting on teaching it. After all, to someone outside the current usage, it is more correct grammatically to say, "I'm here, amn't I?" than "I'm here, aren't I?" The first is parallel construction of a tag in questioning which correctly duplicates the verb form of the first person, while the second, which we accept as correct, violates the rules of parallel construction and uses the second person verb form. So I could easily see how someone -- myself, for example -- as a native teacher of a foreign language might make such a mistake, in my sincere effort to teach the proper form of English to my students. Of course other possiblities exist as to why students are being taught this in junior high, if that's what happened. I'd be interested to find out exactly how it happened.

I have no argument about whether it should be marked wrong or not. If the teacher clearly has stated that the class is learning current standard American usage, and never taught "amn't" as standard usage, then wrong it is. However, as I have endeavored to show in a few posts, there's more to it than that. At bare minimum, students should have explained to them why what they learned before as correct is in fact not correct, with proper contexts applied. Otherwise, this sort of thing can have an undermining effect. Students are living, breathing human beings (awkward, isn't it?) not knowledge machines.

My best teachers have put across the notion that education isn't about right or wrong answers, but about a love of learning the subject and developing the ability to think critically. I agree. I'm not saying that right and wrong answers don't matter -- of course they do. But literal knowledge is only one level of teaching, and generally considered the lowest. There are many other levels. See http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html for learning domains in Bloom's taxonomy.

[markle]

This threads developed quite nicely. A little crispy, a little singed around the edges but overall quite a few points about where to draw lines on usage and how to mark accordingly.

Couple points. While I agree with the sentiment that we should be open to the possibility that student's can learn outside of our classroom and use that knowledge in a way that we have not taught. I think in this case it's pretty obvious that the student made a mistake in making a contraction, rather than picking up language points from Colin Farrell (could you pick a more unIrish Irishman?). Anyhow the contraction is used in question tags, so even if the student was channelling a Scot sheepshagger it was still wrong. It could also be argued that people that use the form are not exactly native speakers of English but were actually Gaelic speakers, which opens that whole can of worms regarding English usage norms in places like Singapore, Bombay, Johannesburg, Eaton College and New Zealand.

[Sweeney Todd]

[Sweeney Todd]

[door3344]

[canuck]

[Eva Pilot]

I find that it's best to teach students English that is real, in the sense that they will be able to use it in a real situation someday.

I have never felt the need to use amn't in a sentence in my life, I don't believe such an odd and outdated contraction has a place in anyone's general vocabulary today quite frankly.

Therefore I wouldn't want to teach it.

[Glenski]

broman wrote:

[JonnyB61]

[quote="canuck"]

[stillnosheep]

[furiousmilksheikali]

[Glenski]

[kinshachi]