I have been studying all afternoon.I am ahead so far on my course planner and am enjoying working my way through. At the moment ( well, obviously not right at the moment ) I am reading Far from the Madding Crowd - nearly finished it. I am also reading the course texts on The Nineteenth Century Novel - Realisms and listening to the CD's that come with the course.
To be honest, having listened for an hour to the CD I am close to dozing off. I took notes, but really... a lot of the content was, it would seem to me, more about the academics involved enjoying the sounds of their own voices rather than saying anything particularly worthwhile.People who speak in sentences that just drift on forever need to learn to be succinct. Think what you want to say and say it - don't just keep talking because you can.Drives me mad!!
Another thing that drives me mad, this time on the other side of the coin, is people who cannot spell and seem to take pride in not doing the work required for the course they are on.Looking at the forums set up by the OU I am constantly amazed by the number of people who blithely admit to not having read any of the set novels, or who consider watching the film of a novel on tv, enough.
For goodness sake... this is a level 3 course ( equivalent to the third year of a university course ) in literature. Surely to goodness over the course of your life you must have read some of these books before?? They are absolute classics. Of course few people will have read all of them before... but surely some of them??
Reading the forums I quake at the spelling mistakes e.g choclet for chocolate. Aaaaaaaagh!!
And that's another thing - while I am on a roll. Teachers.... Surely to goodness teachers should be able to spell and have a knowledge of grammar? Over the years I have watched as teachers make hideous spelling mistakes and general knowledge gaffes - telling classes that 'another name for an octopus is a squid'.... Heaven to Betsy.....
Ok... I know I sound like a demented prig, but it does get my goat... I am slightly obsessive about grammar. I even text in a grammatically correct fashion.Yes... I am a nerd, and an intolerant nerd at that.I had better read through this and check for mistakes....
7 comments:
I am rather pedantic when it comes to spelling and grammar too but am regularly caught out!
It was so tempting to look through your post for a mistake and I did find a tiny one: I think it should be CDs rather than CD's in the first paragraph.
Now you did ask for it!! :-)
Feel free to come over to mine with a red pen.
Now that's funny, Trish!! Serves me right for being, as I said, such a prig!! Ah well...
I have calmed down now so it all seems much less important.
Sarah xx
After I'd posted the comment I was really worried you'd be offended. Thank heavens you weren't - I just couldn't resist it haha!
Funny! Trish, you naughty girl! I enjoyed the comments almost as much as the tale.
Sadly, I am the same and sadly, my writing is riddled with errors.
You would think a teacher should know the difference between a squid and an octopus.
You both had me frantically searching for errors in this comment!!!
I am surprised that in the OU there are people that don't read the texts and rely on the film - a common event when I took my undergrad. It even happened when their peers were running the seminar: an assesment worth up to 30%, which made it an even more heineous crime!(usually when it was the mature students turn, one person even left the seminar because she had done no reading)
As for grammer, I am a pedantic too, although sometimes you would never guess from my posts!! I also dislike contractions in official letters etc. When I recently took an online test they asked for the correct word to be inserted and the only examples were contractions: for example replace wasn't with weren't. I was itching to relace it with were or was not!!
Ha, ha, ha! I'm with you and am always telling my teenagers the importance of texting gramatically and they do think I'm a nerd! I had a literature tutor last year who spelt Austen (as in Jane not as in Powers) AUSTIN!!! And she had a PhD!!!
I really enjoyed this post - and the comments. It's always a comfort to find other like minded people. Just last week I corrected the grammar (yes, in red pen) a letter from my power supply company and returned it commenting I would read it if it made sense to someone who speaks English as their first language. I have no idea how anyone who speaks English as a second language would get on. Sorry for ending a sentence with a preposition! :)
Gosh, I'm on a roll now! One of the things I find difficult in blog world is the differences between American and English spelling. I'm sure some people think I don't know how to spell!
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