![]() It may be that he's knowingly breaking the rules of normative, "proper" grammar in the classroom because he's trying to establish a linguistic connection with his audience in order to teach them more important things about writing than verb tenses. It might grate on your nerves, Brus, but then you might not be a member of the audience this teacher is trying to reach. And if I lose their respect, I lose the ability to teach them important stuffs-stuffs like "knowing your audience is crucial to effective argumentation, in the academy and everywhere else." For example, if, whilst teaching my intro Rhet/Comp classes, I actually used the word "whilst" in the classroom, regardless of whether or not I used it correctly, I would be guilty of neglecting my audience's values and thereby lose some of my students' respect. What you're neglecting to recognize here is the fact that one's *audience* is a crucial part of the rhetoric of any given situation. You can use a Dundee dialect to defend a claim about Shakespeare's chauvinism as easily as with a "proper" BBC dialect. English studies-in particular, composition and academic argumentation-has less to do with proper grammar than it does with clear reasoning in language. One of a teacher's most important responsibilities is to establish a rapport with her students-you can't do that by talking like a priggish Professor Higgins for an hour and a half. These terms would not go down well in the kids' first job or academic interviews now, would they, to be practical? If the teachers know better they should show their pupils the way, and if they don't know better they shouldn't be teachers. They shouldn't say "Yup" or "Yah" or "Nope" or "Hiya" either. That is why British English teachers should not use dialect forms of English such as "stay sat" in a British English classroom. Even more importantly, the teachers would not be educating their pupils properly. I doubt if the teachers there encourage their pupils to work in this medium, as if they were to do so their pupils' employment prospects beyond the city would be very limited. Richly entertaining though they are, they are not conducive to mutual understanding.Īn example: In Dundee spoken English is commonly performed without the use of any consonants whatever, just vowels, apostrophes and glottal stops. But they do not yet go as far as inviting their correspondents to use regional dialects. Are they all to be embraced as "official" languages? The BBC used to follow a policy of a standard accent and standard English, but now promotes regional accents. Sure, we have dialect forms of English used widely throughout the UK. That was another dimension to the argument, but an illustration of how important it is. The riots in South Africa in 1976 which triggered the steps to the dismantling of apartheid were to do with inflicting Afrikaans-medium lessons on kids who wanted to do it in English or native African languages. Yesterday there was a report of a school in Belgium where French-speaking children are obliged to speak Flemish at school on pain of punishment as that is the school policy (in a school where 40% are naturally French speakers, 60% Flemish). How then are their pupils to know what correct forms are? There are places around the world where language use is a really major thing for schools to concern themselves with. Goofy's point is that it is fine for teachers to encourage common usage of English even when incorrect. "He was seated" or "he was sitting" are standard English, "he was sat" is dialect. 'He was laughed at' is another thing altogether. You cannot change "he was laughing" to "he was laughed" either. The imperfect tense is "he was sitting/seated". "Sat" is the past tense: "he sat" or past participle: "he was sat (upon) by (someone). Total time for this section: 50 minutes.Because it is incorrect: it is dialect, not Standard English. You'll need to support your argument with evidence from the passage. ![]()
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