I wrote this down tonight to quiz my 4th grade daughter. It’s just a few of my pet peeves, in a few sentences. My plan is to dictate and have her write it down, but figured I’d share it and invite people to improve upon it:
GAH the lose/loose thing is perhaps my biggest pet peeve re: the English language.
Are you going to do this with her every day? Unfortunately, people don’t learn by being bonked over the head; they learn by usage, repetition, and reinforcement, which takes time. Your sample text, although correct, can actually engender confusion rather than elucidation.
I have the same peeves as you. It incenses me, for example, when I read someone use ‘loose’ when they mean ‘lose’. I must admit, however, that at 9 years old, I probably wrote ‘loose’ when I meant ‘lose’ so I’d cut her a little slack. You have 9 more years to reinforce good vocabulary and grammatical habits in your daughter. No need to rush it in one shot.
Aw come on everybody, I think a typical 9-year-old would think it’s great fun to learn all that. That was the age when we all thought it was so cool to be able to spell antidisestablishmentarianism and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I staunchly support OP’s endeavor to stanch the deluge of these particular mis-used words.
Haha, yeah she’s a smart little gal. 7 words won’t take very long, she might even get them all, already.
She was recently accepted to arguably the best elementary school in the state.
Only problem is the new school was a year ahead when she got there. She reads a lot, grammar isn’t her weak suit.
I only ever “bonk” her on the head as a joke, and it’s called a “bop”. Heh
Oh, I do too. I simply hope the OP has realistic expectations, and doesn’t become too disappointed if the kid doesn’t grasp it all right away.
Also, learning to say much less spell ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ was seen as a personal challenge when I was a kid, so it was fun, kind of like a game. Perhaps the OP can make it more of a game than a chore or a test.
This isn’t adversarial in the slightest. We have fun with this.
I was just hoping the Dope could improve upon my grammar primer, or maybe just take something from it.
Yes, for me it was Czechoslovakia. It was a game, and I only learned that one based on a racist joke I won’t repeat.
Rote memory is about the only way to keep those words straight. I like the OP’s phrase. I wonder if it could be sung to music. That would really make it stick in a child’s mind.
Schoolhouse rock grammar lessons were some of the best I’ve seen for young kids. Primarily because they were done in song and kids don’t forget songs.
Youtube has several Schoolhouse rock lessons. I don’t know if they have one on these words or not.
In a recent discussion where someone was complaining of being born to lose (meaning keys, important papers, etc.), a friend of mine mentioned as an aside that decades before, he once saw a tattoo on a woman reading, “Born Too Loose.” Said he still sometimes spent sleepless nights wondering about that.
It’s its own.
I don’t know. If you don’t understand the underlying rules, how does “Their car is there” look any better than “There car is their”?
I’d recommend instead a mnemonic that connects the correct spellings to the meanings of the words. Something like “Don’t lose that o; it’s the only one we’ve got.”
Agreed. I think there are people for whom example phrases (containing an easily-transposible choice) like that just make the choice harder to remember.
(I don’t have problems with spelling, but I do seem to have a deep-rooted problem with binary choices getting swapped in my memory)
Yup, and phrases like “there’s a moose (or goose) on the loose!” - I think someone is not so likely to misspell ‘moose’ (or ‘goose’), as ‘mose’ (or ‘gose’) are not common words.
It’s not really grammar that you’re addressing here–just spelling. In fact, the success of this spelling lesson is predicated on her prior grammatical knowledge. Without it, it could be meaningless to her.
However, the real, tremendous value for her–both cognitively and for her English language arts skills–is that you are doing anything at all with her involving language. Lots of research keeps indicating that bonding itself is of prime importance to cognitive development with language. The soundness of the pedagogy is not really that important in comparison.
Oh, and if you’re concerned about punctuation, be sure to take care of that comma splice at the end.
Le ver vert va vers le verre vert.
(Full explanation here.)
Without encouraging you to have her learn everything from a screen, but use it as a useful aid to mix things up, there’re an awful lot of online resources she can use.
Some examples are ESL/EFL Quiz: They're, Their or There (Renee Swanson) - this tests their, there and they’re - and also adelescorner.org, really-learn-english.com, englishexercises.org, learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org, http://www.esolcourses.com/, http://ar.akinator.com/, Tipping Point Adventure Game, http://www.interactive.cambridge.org/index.php, http://www.englishmedialab.com/Quizzes/ etc.
Once you’ve checked them to see if they’re suitable (I’ve used them in class but not this semester) you could probably leave her to explore the websites if she’s motivated enough to not get distracted.
They’re eating their lunch over there.
You might try coming up with sentences with we’re/wear/where, principle/principal, and capital/capitol. My pet peeve isn’t homonyms, though, it’s the misspelling of “separate”. I hate seeing it as “seperate”.
You might want to make sure that she is aware that knowing correct usage is one thing, and correcting other people’s usage is another. Just a tip from a former 9-year-old member of the grammar police who was not treated with the respect that my position deserved.
You might want to make sure that she is aware that knowing correct usage is one thing, and correcting other people’s usage is another. Just a tip from a former 9-year-old member of the grammar police who was not treated with the respect that my position deserved.
There’s “a rat” in separate. (I still use that one to this day).
Sense and since are another pair of words that cause trouble.
It’s been years since I saw Kathy.
Please pick me up a bag of chips since you’re going to the store anyway.
The rabbit senses danger as the hungry wolves get closer and closer…