A Critical Look at English Teachers

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by serenesam, Jan 20, 2011.

  1. serenesam Registered Senior Member

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    303
    1). Stop criticizing students for using the same words over and over again. PhD professors who write textbooks use words over and over again like the word “of” twice in one sentence. The Bible used one word 5 times in one sentence. Look at Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - He used the word "nation", "people", and "devotion" repeatedly, sometimes two or three times in one sentence. When Obama was campaigning, I lost count of how many times he used the word “change” in his speeches. Repetition is beautiful to create power and emphasis.

    2). English teachers place too much emphasis on making writing “interesting.” While this is wonderful, this may retard some students in their pursuance of studying law and business. It may retard intellectual rational thought processes. Keep in mind that there is a difference between making writing “interesting” and creative writing. I actually recommend creative writing if there are truths to it like poetry, music, lyrics, fictional story-telling. Creative writing is beautiful if you can manipulate words and truth to your benefit and put yourself in an advantageous situation. Creativity is the foundational essence of the Universe anyways.

    3). The criticism of a “run-on sentence” or a “lengthy sentence” is absurd. I have seen philosophers and geniuses use 50 words in one sentence. Trust me, when you have a complicated mind, it is doable. Why do you think that the Omniscient/Omnipotent does not speak in words? Because it would sound like broken-up meaning.

    4). There is no such thing as "going off topic." When you start to see that everything is connected to everything, one can compare an apple to an orange even if it doesn't make any sense. One can become too beyond average intellectual understanding to write an english paper in the compliance of the will of the teacher because it may take you a couple thousand pages to fully express what you want to say. Besides, the Primary Existence (the independent Supreme Being apart from us an all other things) is all over the place, spontaneous, irrational, non-logical, and unpredictable anyways.

    5). Stop criticizing people for writing in the passive voice. There is nothing illegal about this. Some sentences have to be written in the passive voice for the complete true meaning of the sentence to take effect. Some science teachers even require this:

    http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/passivevoice.html

    The irony as to whether to write in the passive voice or not is that that which is perfect (Omniscient/Omnipotent) writes both in the active and passive voices anyways. Creation is both a passive and active act in of itself.

    6). The Omniscient/Omnipotent is too big and complicated that it won't fit in a five page essay even with the act of paraphrasing and condensing. It is too complicated to have a continual and consistent picture framework like the way an essay in an English class has to be “well-structured.”

    7). Stop criticizing students for being too vague. Sometimes, things are better stated being vague and not specific. "As Siddhartha walked into the room and held up a lotus, he did not speak, he just smiled for a picture is worth a thousand words." Being too specific can sometimes take away the value of the overall conceptual framework as to what is really occurring. Being vague may also allow one to see things on a global scale. For example, when people refer to poor people and how they are lazy, they are very specific and argue as if they think they are expert attorneys, but sometimes when you step back a little and you just get a vague perception of what is occurring, you see what is really happening and trust me, words cannot be described. There is more that meets the eyes. Notice that when I said "words cannot be described," it is written in the passive voice. I wonder how it would sound in the active voice. "One cannot describe the words." This works but I feel like the power of the meaning in the passive voice is more powerful and has a greater effect compared to the power of the meaning in the active voice.
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Dude, these are all good suggestions for writing, you should really pay attention to them. I've read some of your writing, it's almost unreadable.
     
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  5. serenesam Registered Senior Member

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    Kind of ironic that I can critique my own writing. LOL!
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    You're just being silly. They're not talking about prepositions.
    Have you read the original or just an English translation? Or are you just talking about prepositions again?
    In the hands or mouth of a great orator, then sometimes it is. Most of us aren't that eloquent so the technique will fail for us. This is like saying a professional stuntman can drive his car for a mile and a half on two wheels, so we should all try doing the same thing.
    It's easy to dumb down your writing to that level when you need to. It's not so easy to smarten it up for the rest of the things you do in life. Anybody who intends to study law had better be really bright, and really bright people are generally very good with their native language. In fact language skill is the most fundamental measure of intelligence for most people. All the lawyers I know write very well. They're the only people whose writing does not make me tear my hair out when I have to edit it.
    What fortune cookie told you that? I make a living as a writer and editor and so far everything you've said is pure dreck.
    All creative writing has to be interesting, but not all interesting writing has to be creative. News reporting has to be interesting, but creativity is definitely not recommended.
    You don't seem to understand the difference between a true run-on sentence and a merely lengthy sentence. A run-on sentence has too many clauses and can be made clearer--and often more powerful--by replacing some of the subordinating conjunctions with periods.
    Just because something is doable doesn't mean that it should be done. Making a sandwich out of dog food is "doable."
    More woo-woo again. This is a place of science so please keep your ridiculous references to supernatural phenomena to yourself.
    Your reader has a finite amount of time to read what you've written. If you wander off into other topics, no matter how interesting you may find them, and no matter how carefully you show their relationships to the topic at hand, you're going to lose your reader.
    The purpose of language is to communicate. If the person you're talking or writing to doesn't understand you, then you have failed to communicate. Every good writer has to learn the art of concision. Remember the famous quote by your hero Abe Lincoln: "I'm writing you a long letter because I don't have time to write a short one." Whenever I've written something important I give it to my wife, and she reduces it by two thirds while making it three times as good.
    Again, please forgo the antiscientific references to supernatural phenomena and creatures. In a place of science that constitutes trolling and trolling is a bannable offense.
    There's also nothing illegal about farting in public but it's not the way to succeed in life.
    Of course some sentences must be written in passive. That's fine. Just use the active voice for all the others, okay? The main problem with overuse of the passive voice is that it obscures agency and causality and makes you look like a weasel. The Nixon administration was famous for its use of the passive voice, as in: "It was decided that the strategy would be followed." Who decided, and why don't they want to admit it? Who is going to follow the strategy, and why don't you want to identify him?
    On the exceedingly rare occasion when that situation arises, it will be easy to lapse into a vague style of discourse. But if you don't learn how to write with precision, you won't be able to do it the other 99% of the time when it's appropriate. Your teachers are trying to prepare you for everyday life, not for the exceptions that you can handle easily with no training.
    Only if you're a bad writer.
    Being vague, by definition, prevents the reader from seeing anything clearly at all.
    What a ridiculous assertion. Vagueness improves understanding? Not in this universe!
    Both of those statements sound pretty stupid. Are you really talking about describing words, or describing the words' referents? It's hard to tell from either version of your statement: they are both too vague.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not sure that you are, you seem to be making excuses for bad writing.
     
  9. serenesam Registered Senior Member

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    303
    I still don’t understand. Why is this board called Free Thoughts and has the word Random in it? Can someone look up the word free and random? This means I can say anything I want no matter how crazy it is without evidence whatsoever. I should have the right to bring up religious or supernatural references if I want to. Now if I was doing this in another board, then maybe it would be a different story.
     
  10. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    serensam- if you're not being shown the door, you are certainly being handed your hat.

    The next move is yours-
     

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