I don’t know what it means to PM. My friend told me about this website a few days ago, so this is my only posting. She said I could post and people would give me some ideas. She was right, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to post again. It’s not easy to do because like someone said - I can’t read into the tone of the messages and I don’t really like that. I like talking to people directly, I don’t even like the telephone. I really appreciate all of the information. Even some of the stuff said that was hard for me to hear is important.
Thank you about my dad. I was pretty young but I remember much. Sometimes he would still be awake at 3 o’clock in the morning reading. He spoke some English; I think there was a journal from England that he got or had access to. He was very inspirational and kind. He always told me to dream. That is pretty great because girls didn’t hear that too much.
With all due respect, maybe you just need some practice with google. I googled “counting in french deux milles” and out of the first 4 links, 2 answered your first question. When I searched “french grammar en vs dans” I came up with a half dozen pages all discussing that specific question. Your third question is about how you should be treating a difference as it pertains to class, so it’s not for google, but it seems like something you can ask during class.
I’d be a little annoyed as a professor as well, being the first place you go for questions. I know you said the class is moving fast and that he doesn’t have much time for questions, but he should be making some time to ask for clarification. If he’s not, maybe you could talk to him about it. Although with your scores in the 90s, I’d say you’re understanding what he wants you to.
If you do feel the need to email him with things like this, at least shown that you’ve put in the effort. “Dear prof, I found conflicting information for mille and milles online, which is correct?” or “I’ve been reading about cases which use en and dans, but I’m still confused about blah blah.”
You’re in college and should have some basic skills like this under your belt, although given that it’s a junior college, I’d hope that the prof, or I suppose more realistically a librarian or other help source, could take some time to teach you some of the research skills you haven’t yet acquired.
A “PM” is a private message. I forgot that you said English is not native to you! On the top right corner of the board, under your username you should see a link marked “private messages”. If you click on that you will be directed to your Private Message inbox. On the left you should see a link marked “send new message”. Click the link and you can put in someone’s username and go from there.
To receive a PM you need to enable PM in your account. You can click on “Edit options” and find the “Enable private messages” check box.
Please do not feel that you must send me one- I just wanted to clarify how to do it if you wanted to. This can be a very nice place to read and post to. Even if you choose not to post, reading might be fun and educational!
I’m surprised your teacher wasn’t Spanish. From Spain, I mean.
We had a couple of old men Spaniards teaching in my high school and they were known to act with great imperiousness, in or out of class. It was simply a teacher’s privilege where they came from.
Hello Bell, Yes, you are much better with google than I am. I did not expand any sentences and used the words only. With more practice and your examples I will do better in the future. Being in college with basic skills, I agree, and I am working on that. At age 16 I was still learning a lot of English, even today many words I look to the dictionary to find. That is likely why the sciences and some maths were easier for me in high school and now in college. Someone earlier mentioned a tutor, I will see about that situation for this class.
I stepped on a college campus in January and am working to bring honor to my family and do as best as I can. In America, it is very different here. Classroom behavior in college is very different from high school also, I was not aware of such big differences. A small high school that did “hold my hand,” as someone stated earlier is what helped keep my spirits high and to persevere. Where I come from, girls did not go to school in their teenage years, they got married and had children. With English as a second language, I stumble. But, I do get up and move on. Sometimes the language barrier is challenging because I have some words in my native language that do not translate to English. And there are English words that I can not translate very well. So much has to do with “concepts.” I just learned that Eskimo peoples have many different words for snow, or kinds of snow. It is very interesting to me. I had never seen snow or heard about it until I was 13. When a math word problem mentioned “inches of snow” I could not answer it, I did not know what snow was.
Doug - Imperiousness, a new word for me.
ITD, thank you. PM-ing. I guess that is a new word too.
Good night everyone. I am ending this conversation, if that is how it is done. I have a lot of information now.
Resources that can help you in French:
Bescherelle: Pretty much the Bible of French grammar; everyone I know has a copy of La Grammaire in their homes somewhere, and this is in a province that speaks predominantly French! You can enter a verb in “Le Conjugeur” and get it conjugated in all kinds of ways. Buying the books can be a huge help to you as you continue to learn French.
Reverso: It’s pretty upper-level, but these pages seem to cover all kinds of stuff, and I use them often to confirm or review something when I need to write in French. I’ve used this page too, but much less.
Word-reference.com has a pretty good French-English dictionary.
Bonne chance!
Doctoral student and part-time instructor here. First, I’ll say that if your prof is at a community college, he’s there to teach. That’s the mission of community colleges. If he doesn’t want to work with students or have patience for “simple” questions (of course they’re simple, to him), he should have applied for a Research 1 job, where he could get a 2/2 teaching load and make grad students teach the course and deal with students. He didn’t, so he should suck it up and do his fucking job.
But…
As much of a prick as he may be, he still assigns the grade at the end of the term. If you go to battle with him, unless he’s physically assaulting or sexually harassing you, you will lose. And this class is not worth it. Comply with his request to stop sending emails and go to office hours or whatever. Find a tutor. Hell, ask some questions on the Dope (as long as they’re not directly homework related). Do what you can to stay on his good side. Finish the term strongly. I emphasize: Winning a battle with him is not worth having to retake the course.
Now, just to show you that we college instructors aren’t all self-important dicks, let me say that I wish *more *of my students would email me questions. I actually have a policy in the syllabus which states that I expect questions via email. I modeled my policy after my advisor, who, even while being something of a superstar in his field and being editor of an A journal, always, always had time for emailed questions (and stated as much).
Questions from students make my teaching job easier. I can immediately see where the confusion lies and adjust my lesson plan accordingly. Often what I think is hard isn’t, and what I think is easy isn’t. In addition, email facilitates catching subtle misconceptions and flat-out wrong notions early, before they have a chance to become really ingrained. For example, I had a student email me the other day about the formula for the binomial distribution. All of her calculations were correct–except that she thought 5! meant 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 (it’s 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1–big difference). This student probably wouldn’t have stopped by during office hours to ask this question (parking is a bitch on my campus) because it might seem like a lot of trouble over a “simple thing.” But email is quick and cheap, and I was able to help her learn the correct definition of 5! before she spent 2 hours working with–and thus learning–the wrong formula.
Email also actually saves me time, potentially. If I get a bunch of emails about a homework problem, I can send out one hint using my email distribution list to the entire class (one of the first things I do each semester is set up an email distribution list). That way, I don’t have to answer the same question 5 or 10 times in office hours or waste time in class going over a problem that, with a simple emailed hint, is no longer that difficult.
This is probably in tl;dr territory, but I don’t care. I enjoy hearing from students, and the best instructors I’ve had (mostly in grad school) always welcomed questions via email.
I think its important to remember that an instructor does not have the right to be email abusive to a student; no matter what the student says. That instructor is in a position of authority and a professional, therefore has the responsibility of mainting a level of civility. If the instructor feels s/he cannot do this, then s/he needs to talk to a collegue, talk to the dean, or at least wait for a cool down before lashing out. Its common courtesy. We all wish we could lash out at those that annoy us, but we don’t (I hope). So many other, more appropriate options exist, that this instructors behavior is less than stellar. There is no excuse for abuse.
We should be helping this young girl to be empowered as well as thoughtful. Could she have done things differently? Of course! Does she deserve to be verbally abused for it? HELL NO! and shame on you for excusing him!
Is it weird that I’m 100% the exact opposite when it comes to asking questions? I’m someone who vaaaastly prefers communicating via txt, IM, email, etc. but when it comes to a question I need to ask a professor, I am far more comfortable asking in person. njtt seems to tie into part of why I feel that way, with:
I’ve always felt that an email is… I guess an “extra” intrusion on their time? Class time, the few minutes before or after class and their office hours are chunks of time that they have scheduled to be dedicated to that class. If I ask a question then, it’s not hogging the time s/he has dedicated to all the other shit s/he needs to get done.
Also, while I can clean up a paper quite nicely, I tend to write things like emails (and messageboard posts ;)) similar to how I would actually talk. The result is usually a slightly rambling piece of text that gives all the info needed, yeah, but also probably has a lot more as well. It seems easier to skim through that audially than textually (therefore it’d be less irritating to them and I’ll look less like a rambling dork ;)).
This? Is friggin’ hilarious! WTF is up with people?
It is important to note that, but if you think the Chair of Department, who is three years from retirement is going to change his ways because he made a student feel bad, you’re dreaming. There’s what he should do (be a reasonable person) and there is what he will do (exactly what he did).
To suggest otherwise to the student who felt bad, is to suggest she lives in an alternate reality.
OP - what your father did is called “Archaeological Conservation” and it is an interesting field which involves a great deal of Chemistry. if you wanted to pursue it, you would need to complete your Bachelors, and then add a 2-year Master’s program such as this one:
http://www.ioa.ucla.edu/conservation-program/introduction
Finally OP, calling an full professor an “instructor” is an insult. I’m certain you did not mean it that way but be very careful what you say around crusty old bastards like this guy. He is not likely to take it in good humor.
Look it up.
“Mille” means “thousand” not “million”. Go to Google Translate (not always the best, but adequate for this purpose), choose English (or your native language) => French and type “two thousand”. Then paste your answer into Google and cross-reference with sites in France to verify it’s a correct translation.
Look it up.
Or, since this is actually a reasonable question with a complex answer, why not ask when you’re actually in class?
Look it up.
(Also, they are the informal of “you”, not “to”.)
Yes, you are being a pretty substantial pest. Academia often talks a good game about being interested in inquisitive students, but this often has hard real world limits if there’s a lot of stuff for the instructor to do especially for entry level courses.
You’re full of brio in the world of languages opening up to you, but you are pinging him with emails that take a considerable time to respond to, and he’s getting annoyed. In looking your description of the situation and the tone of your posts, you are obviously quite intelligent, but inquisitive young people are often very high maintenance.
Plus you’re 17 and you don’t realize you’re high maintenance. A busy, senior academic, and a very inquisitive entry level student who likes to delve into the minute details of the subject being studied is often not a match made in heaven.
You need to dial it back, and get your infill answers from some other source.
Did nobody see that the instructor doesn’t have office hours btw? He said to e-mail him. She may be e-mailing him too much, but he needs to start out by asking politely - “Please confine all of your questions to one e-mail a week or bring them up in class.” Yelling is not acceptable and I am appalled at the people who seem to think it’s just fine.
That being said, yeah, you won’t win this argument. Just apologize, chalk it up to a lesson in adulthood, and limit your questions. Many college professors are dicks who lord it over their students and have no respect for hardworking kids because they’ve seen a few douchebags over the years.
I don’t think anybody here thinks yelling is ok, but the reality is that this guy is probably an old guy (usually department chairs are) and often times, old guys don’t really realize the subtle differences in text communication. My dad sends me all caps emails all the time, but I promise he isn’t shouting at me.
Even if he did have office hours (the professor, not my dad), I’m sure he would have been irritated if she showed up every time he had them to ask easily Googleable questions.
The number query is easily Googlable: I tried the query with French numbers:
http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/tutorials/numbers/
Part of being a student is attempting to answer the questions before engaging the instructor.
Having said that, it is the instructor’s role to identify resources that the students can use in their work.
The shouting is irrelevant. He’s still taking out his frustration on his student, and that is wrong. The statement “STOP ASKING QUESTIONS” should not be in a teacher’s vocabulary. His job is to teach. If he has not taught the student how to look up their own questions, then it’s his own fault that the student is asking him those questions.
I’d personally take that up with him. You can take the class again if he’s truly a sociopathic douchebag and would fail a student for disagreeing with him. But, most likely, he is just frustrated, and communicated poorly. A nicely worded email (or letter if you don’t think he’ll read it) will likely work if he’s a decent person at all. Here’s what I’d send:
If you are scared, you can save it for after grades come in–perhaps even on his student review. I’d change the wording a bit to remind him, as he’ll likely have forgotten.
I see no reason you have to take people treating you poorly. It’s people who never respond assertively that wind up getting walked on. If more people would stand up for themselves (without being an asshole), this world would be a better place. That’s why I do it, anyways.
This is not a valid concern, IMO. The whole point of email is that you can respond to it at your leisure. Most teachers I’ve had that aren’t fresh out of college only answer emails during scheduled office times.
I have had a teacher who said he doesn’t answer emails from students–but he was a choir director, and he would almost always need to answer the questions in person. He thus provided ample ways to do this. Plus, he still checked his email, just in case a student had an emergency and needed to tell him why they wouldn’t be in class.
If you prefer not using email, that’s fine, as there are plenty of reasons to prefer face to face conversations. But I think your reasoning in the above quote is faulty. It’s not like you’re calling your professor at home.
I forgot about this post the first time around. My response is “You may not be able to change things, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I wish more people would try.”
She has already tried to reason with him, and received a slamdown for her efforts. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.