Blog Post 7

For today’s reading, I found all the information to be extremely helpful to me.  I have yet to take a grammar or linguistics class and so the first 15 pages of the assigned reading in the textbook was new to me.  I especially found this information to be beneficial to my education and expand my personal knowledge of proper grammar.  I appreciated the examples and the pace at which each term was explained.  I thought the way the book examined each term by giving the definition, examples of words and phrases that fall under its category, and then examples of how/where it is used really helped this new information click in my head, even though it was my first time learning it.  Overall, I enjoyed the read, even though it was hefty, it was truly beneficial to me.

As I read further into the assigned reading, more and more of the information became familiar to me. I did know the ins and outs of persuasive and informative writing prior; however, this was a great refresher and reminder to the specific rules and techniques to teaching these specific procedures in a classroom.

I especially liked the refresher on Ethos, Pathos and Logos. I have not heard of these terms since my first semester of college.  I forgot they even existed.  I appreciated the detail in explaining and refreshing these terms.  Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed this textbook, its educational value it has had to me, and the way in which the information is displayed.  I would recommend all English teachers to have this book on hand in their future classrooms to reference when needed.  This book is full of helpful information for the classroom.

            When looking at the Common Core State Standards, I found that there is not much structure when it comes to the grammar aspect of them.  I can now see why so many of us in the class were deprived of such grammar knowledge in our own high school education.  I think there is a lot of room for creative license when teaching grammar and such in the classroom, however I do think that it also leaves room for it to get skimmed over and not taught correctly or how students truly need.  As we discussed in class, I think a lot of teachers are afraid to teach it because they themselves are not confident in the subject.