That you know what predicate means. Or that you once knew, back in school. That you can find a verb in a sentence. I am mostly talking to adults here, but if a kid wants to chime in, I am good with that, too.
Yes, I do know that I just wrote a series of sentence fragments. They were for emphasis, and sometimes that is okay.
I am not going to explicate on why my sudden obsession with predicates; I am just adjusting to my new job, and yesterday was not the most pleasant day. However, today, my daughter and I went into school and put away books and tidied up and my room feels better.
I swear the philodendron I bought last week grew two inches and turned itself around 90 degrees to head across the desk toward the window. I believe I must buy it a plant stand before it decides to take over the desk and to start using the computer. My daughter, who is 12, is nothing like her siblings (or, eh-hmm, me) in some ways: today, she cleaned the freezer for fun. The freezer would have to be handing me a plea for help or a citation from the Department of Health for me to clean it out....I am only exaggerating slightly. I have a schedule for cleaning the freezer based on the school calendar, but I certainly wouldn't do it for fun.
I found the weirdest thing volunteering in my potato crop - wheat! I do occasionally give my chickens scratch grains which include wheat berries, and I must have accidentally included some not completely composted chicken litter in my potato bed. I had no idea wheat would grow here in Hawaii. It is definitely worth experimenting with - I read that some farmers tried at the beginning of the last century without much success, but they tried on Maui, and we're colder than most of Maui.
I would so love to be able to grow some grain to make flour.
4 comments:
Well, I have to chime in that yes, I know what both of those are, and could find one in a sentence. But then, from the other people I encountered in college writing classes, my school, especially elementary school, was way more efficient and effective about teaching that kind of thing.
If you get a chance, and haven't yet, you should check out a book called Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Its pretty awesome.
I love that book! I think a basic grounding in grammar really helps when reading long complex sentences. I also find that kids in high school, when they haven't had the grounding, really want to learn it!
I went to Catholic school, we spent what was a seemingly endless amount of time learning proper grammar.
Yeah, me, too, Chai Chai - and my husband, too. Sometimes we sit there discussing grammar, to the bafflement of our kids. It does help you figure out the trickier sentences. Actually, though, I took a grammar class as part of my MA degree in my 20's and that was the class that really made it make sense to me - before that, it was just memorizing.
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