I've been teaching my writing classes why pronouns must agree with their antecedents. While reading blogs this morning, I ran across this sentence:"...some artist risk their lives to create and speak in a hostile environment."The pronoun their refers back to artist. One or the other is incorrect. I read the whole paragraph and know the writer intended the plural artists, yet she consistently used the singular word artist instead;
artist = singular subject
their = plural pronoun
"We learn about many Haitian artist."I think the problem is not about spelling, but about hearing. It's hard to distinguish between the spoken words artist and artists, but they look different on a page. A careful reader should notice that one word has an "s" on the end and the other does not. People cannot spell correctly because they don't read and thus are unable to really hear what is said. Here are other examples of writers having problems with plurals that I've run across today:
many = more than one
artist = singular
"I may be one of the rare person who has not read this book."Cheating in class
"I picked up seven novels and six DVD."
"...a countless amounts of dreams..." (The whole phrase is a mess.)
I discovered another reason why students may be confused about plurals. During yesterday's grammar test, one young man was looking up something on his large-screen cell phone, which I confiscated until the end of class. I teach at a college, yet his screen showed me that he was looking up "PLURAL." Could you tell me the plurals of bird and baby? Those were two of the eight words on the test. It occurred to me that he didn't know the meaning of the word plural. Maybe I should start with vocabulary:plural = more than oneI told my early class yesterday their biggest writing problem was failing to listen to the instructions. A few minutes later one young man said, "Would you repeat that? I was working on something else." No one seemed to notice the irony, and I am rapidly losing hope that I can get through to some of them.
antecedent = preceding
This Write It Right post is the first in my new series about words and writing.
4 comments:
What a shame that instead of being able to teach creative writing you have to go back to the basics.
I thought of you and your students when I came across this writing assignment which is the basis for my "where I'm from" post. The assignment was a lot of fun, really made me think back.
I must really watch my use of pleurals now more than ever 'cause I know Bonnie is watching and will use me as an example!
Hope all is well with you, have a great day!
Pleurals -- spoken like a true medical transcriptionist familiar with the pleural cavity of the human body! Yes, I studied anatomy once upon a time, back when I wanted to go to medical school. Now I'm trying to convince non-listening students that plural means more than one.
Verilion left his comment on another of my blogs (same post):
Can you do a post on commas please ;)
The kid who asked for the instructions to be repeated made me laugh and the point about vocab is also extremely important.
I teach many EAL students and the mistake you've highlighted sounds like a typical mistake that learners of English make. It is; however, terrifying when it's native speakers making these basic errors.
I told her, "Yes, Verilion, I'll do a post on commas one of these days. My students, want to put, commas just, anywhere in "they're" sentences. (Yes, there-their-they're is another post for another day.)"
Preschool also found this (same) post on Words from a Wordsmith. She added this comment:
Just bumped into your blog. I found it very interesting, and was so glad to see someone else has problems with their students. Although I am not a teacher, my best friend is, has taught at CO State, Montana State, and has been at U of H Hilo branch for approx. 20 years. Her speciality is English composition, for years we have joked about her teaching "remedial" writing to incoming freshman classes. She has seen the trend now moving towards "remedial" reading as well. When she refuses to give passing marks on papers handed in, the students "threaten" to go to her supervisor...... She's looking forward to retiring soon.
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