It’s my native language, but I’m always interested in what students think of it in terms of learning difficulties.
To me learning English (out of a dictionary) was tough because I never knew when a word was a verb or an adjective - live vs live for instance - one is a verb, the other describes an event, either recorded or… live (as it were).
So what do you think, PSXer? Is all that feminine, masculine stuff tough to learn?
(I need to add that although I knew how to speak the language, because I was very young, I never knew german grammar rules as well as I should have. I just knew what sounded right. English grammar rules were very tough, though.
See, I’m the other side of this equation. I work in the scheduling area of the registrar’s office at a state university – I schedule your final exams.
How could it be so hard to remember your finals? Come on. Everything except time conflicts and special requests was done by early October. The Standard Exam Schedule and the Mass Exam Schedule have been on the website since the beginning of the semester. All you have to do is write down the days and times of your exams on index cards, or sticky notes, and put 'em where you can see 'em. Like remembering five very important appointments.
I already learned Latin and Greek, so certain grammatical things, like cases and verb conjugations and gender are not hard to me. The only hard thing about gender is actually remember what gender each noun is, but the concept itself wasn’t hard.
I guess my biggest problem is just memorizing so much vocabulary. Also I find the seprapable prefix verbs confusing. You gotta wait till the end of the sentence for something that could change the whole meaning.
I have trouble with the verb to the end clauses while speaking. When I write I can do it ok. That’s a problem for me with speaking in general. I know grammar rules, but while speaking I can not always think fast enough to apply them.
OMG thanks. I just had to check my exam schedule because I had that heart stopping feeling I was missing it, or they conflicted, or something was just plain wrong.
My exams are in March. I will probably now hyperventilate at random times for the next day or two.
I hate that feeling, and now that I’m back at uni I keep having The Dream. In mine, I have pants, but sometimes no teeth. Ugh.
I teach and get this all the time.
It is usually students who are not paying attention, or don’t go onto the student portal to see when tests and assignments are scheduled.
I tell them, multiple times, when things are due. Also write it on the board every class.
It is on their student portal, if they ever bothered to go there instead of Facebook and look once in awhile.
I have no sympathy - and even other students in the class will say, “Geez, he told us like ten times it was due today!”
Just this afternoon, I had three (out of 20) students who showed up without the paper that was due today. Luckily for them, I allow papers to be submitted via email until midnight. They went flying off to the library to finish the work as everyone else in class went home after class.
I’m bad with day and dates and take many steps to make sure I have important things on the right days, but I’ve still missed important things and probably will in the future, sadly… I have a planner, a huge wall calender, and frequently state out loud or write down the day and date in the morning just to get it “set” in my mind, but still make errors.
Once, an employer challenged my unemployment compensation and asked for a hearing. I showed up a day late… but the awesome mediator let me listen to the tape of my employer from the day before and rebut her claims. The case was found in my favor! What luck!
Once I had to undergo a peer review for a med error at work (This decides if you get reported to the Board of Nursing- a very big deal). My boss kept calling that morning and I thought she was just trying to get me to work extra (like she always does), so I ignored her first and second call. The third time, I called her back to tell her to quit bugging me, and she said “Are you alright?” thinking I was too freaked out about the hearing to attend or something. Because she and my company are so awesome and I was prepared, the let me conduct my portion of the hearing by phone that morning (and the case was found to not warrant being reported to the Board). Woot, again.
Luckily, he never asked if I had anything to do with it! Though you’d think it would cross your mind that a student would blow up Iceland to avoid an exam; it’s more obvious than pulling the fire alarm! Especially when the student is both an engineer and a chemist!
Actually, he just referred me to the Student Affairs office, who asked for proof of my airline booking along with my explanation of the series of events. I kept copies of all the etickets and reservation confirmations Air Canada gave me every time my flights got cancelled and I got rebooked on another one (I think it was 5 of them!), so it was pretty easy. My five day trip turned into 11 days…had things gone correctly, I would have been back in Canada 3 days before the exam!
Speaking of papers my religious studies class this last semester had three grades: midterm, paper, and final. That was it. So yeah, it was a very important paper.
The paper was due on a Tuesday and the Thursday class before such the teacher walked in and was like, “So remember, what’s due on Tuesday?”
Then I hear in the back, “Wait, what’s due on Tuesday? FUCK!”
So I think it’s pretty safe to say his weekend was ruined.
Thanks to a brain fart from me and a brain fart from my Government professor, I ended up submitting a Gov’t paper a month early and left myself with about 14 hours to do a Liberal Arts paper. I managed to get an A on the Liberal Arts paper even though I hadn’t even started watching the documentary it was based on when I realized that I had less than a day to finish it.
It’s a good thing that I’ve had to go to campus for only 2 tests so far this semester because I can pretty much guarantee that I would have screwed up a date or time at some point, if given the opportunity.
I remember going through this every semester. I think the biggest source of confusion was the professors. It seems like there would always be one or two who tried to schedule their own exam that didn’t match up with the standard schedule at all.
