The Best of English 11

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I’ve survived my first semester of teaching … it’s all over except the stack of papers on the floor awaiting grading. (They may have to wait a long time.) Thought I’d celebrate by sharing some of the finest moments from student papers this semester.

“The advertisement for Ralph Lauren Romance fragrance is in fact romantic. It displays a … photograph of an attractive man lifting a beautiful girl up to hold her. The woman has her legs wrapped around the man’s waste.”

“Tipper Gore started the Parents’ Music Resource Center, which was instrumental in placing Parent Advisory stickers on offensive cads.”

“The most common age of abusive mothers is around 31 years old. This is also known to be the most common age for two-year-olds in the United States.”

“Most musicians in the world do not have the time to mail out CDs to all of the people who want them.” (As opposed to the musicians outside of the world, who have plenty of time 'cos they’re spending a year dead for tax purposes…)

“Athletes who use steroids would not do so if they knew about the harem involved.”

And finally, the Infamous Cloning Essay, a tour-de-force of improbably science and tortured logic…

"The human race today is not perfect. We have not reached the height of our development. Why does our society want to make clones of people when millions of years of development still exist? Take a look at the people living in medieval times. Imagine if that generation had cloned itself. Our lives today would be without the comforts of modern-day living we experience. By cloning a mass population, the evolution of further generations is prohibited.

“Cloning is a form of asexual reproduction. Normal means of reproduction involve the genetic transfer of two individuals. During this transfer some of the genetic material is mutated thus creating a distinctly individual child. If people are cloned, this individuality will be destroyed. The process of evolution will be virtually nonexistent…”

Later in the same essay, the author waxes metaphysical…

“The creation of a child combines the genetic material of both parents. Cloning skips this step. An individual consists of more than genetic material. Each person contains a soul. By genetically creating an individual through cloning, a soul is not extablished, as the person is a work of science, not a symbol of love. Parents create their children and thus accept the responsibility for their child’s upbringing. If a cloned child is created, some of this feeling of responsibility will be lost leaving the child the victim of society.”

2

Oh thank you Fretful Porpentine for cheering me up. I guess I do miss the days of teaching and all the little amusements; grading papers oft produced some hysterical laughter and new insights in the staff room.

3

That was some funny stuff, FP. Thanks for sharing.

I got an e-mail about a year ago with examples like this, and I wondered if it was true. I see now that it probably was. My favorite from the e-mail was this gem:

“Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.”

4

From one I just graded on gender roles:

“Most men won’t put up with women in a position on top of them.”

5

I was thinking just the other day about my favorite little gem from this rich vein. While still in college, I worked for the English department and was occasionally asked to do preliminary marking of student papers. They were always good for a few giggles, but the only one that’s stayed in my memory came during a garden variety compare-and-contrast assignment, using the well-known comp textbook chestnut “I Want a Wife” and another essay that makes the same points in a more conventional manner. One student (and in fairness, she was not a native English speaker) wrote:

The professor enjoyed it as much as I did; I elected to let her figure out how to explain the connotations of that expression in English.

6

Actually, I would think more athletes would use steroids if they thought that there was a harem involved. :wink:

But really, these are great. It kind of makes me think though. I’m in 11th grade. Is my writing that bad?

7

Nah, hyper. I’m in eleventh grade too. And I write reaaaal good. (OK, OK, well.) :slight_smile: It must be unique to Fretful’s students.

8

Perhaps, once you’d explained to them what a harem is. You could offer them jobs as guards (a certain amount of physical strength would seem to be called for), neglecting to mention the, um, structural alterations usually carried out preparatory to assuming such duties. Which, come to think of it, is not so far from the reported “harem involved” in steroid use.

Not likely. In any random collection of freshman comp essays, you’ll get a certain percentage of such solecisms. The trick if you’re grading is not to let the experience of grading those papers color your opinion of the good ones (and vice versa). Besides, it’s not the writing that’s at question usually (aside from the obvious typos) – it’s the quality of the thinking that led to it that’s at fault (as in FP’s example of the cloning paper).

9

The eleventh-graders can stop worrying – they’re off the hook, for two more years anyway. English 11 is standard college-freshman comp. (It used to be English 1, but then the department discovered they needed an even more basic course, and they didn’t want to call it English 0, so they just added ten to all the course designations. I’m not making this up, unfortunately.)

10

I think my favorite slip of the pen (aside from the numerous “Dan couldn’t come to school today because I was sick” notes) was the student who wrote:

“So and so tripped walking down the stairs and lay at the bottom, a fallen woman.”

To which the professor replied,

“You must learn to distinguish a fallen woman from one who has merely slipped.”

11

Why, Dan, honey, YOU didn’t play hookey did you? <eg>

12

Nah. I was pretty much of a wimp when it came to rebelling against authority. I participated in Senior Ditch Day, but ditched the last two periods instead of the whole day. :rolleyes:

[sub]Though once I got to college…[/sub]

13

Not all High Schoolers write that poorly. The funny ones just stand out more. My daughter, and most of her friends are very good writers (English Honors students, actually).

In fact, I’ve seen some incredible examples of mangled syntax, malapropisms and misspellings from adults. Written communication seems to be something that quite a few people have trouble with, although I can’t understand why, myself. I love writing. And I are good at it, to.