capybara- I think I would have written back requesting the student translate his/her previous emails into English if he/she expected a response.
In law school I was dating a girl who was a straight-A student (I was not). She asked me to proofread a term paper in which she had used the phrase “minus well”, as in “If the Supreme Court expects their rulings to… then they minus well…” She laughed it off as a typo but I suspect she didn’t know how to really say it.
Lehman’s ummmm pie! I love Lehman’s
Oh it definitely shows a basic lack of understanding all right.
I just think it’s neat when you can follow somebody’s thought process with ease and see how they came to the wrong conclusion due to their basic lack of understanding. So often I have absolutely no idea where people are coming from.
I used to do this on handwritten essays!
For example, if I couldn’t remember if it was restraunt or restaurant, I’d spell it both ways so that at least one of them would be write.
At least it’s not in textspeak like many of the student emails I get.
And you guys know that student who wrote that poem that made me wonder about my “ass personality”? Major offender who writes this way even in her critical papers (!!) and emails, down to the use of “ummmmm” and “well” every other line. The poem I’m talking about had air quotes, for instance. :smack: I didn’t even know you could air quote in writing.
Don’t leave us hanging! How does one air quote in writing?
Care to tell more? I don’t recall Kingsolver misusing laments etc in that book, but I’d like to know what words or phrases she did misuse. I read it years ago and such details are gone from my mind.
If I had to guess, I’d say that Eureka is referring to Rachel’s segments in the book. Rachel, the oldest daughter, routinely misuses words. For example, in her first segment she laments “and here my brand-new tulip-tailored linen suit in Poison Green with square mother-of-pearl buttons was fixing to give up the goat.” A few sentences later she comments that “a roar of voices and weird birds lombarded my ears and filled my head to the brink.”
I don’t think this was an error on the author’s part. Rather, it’s Kingsolver’s way of showing that Rachel’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
One simply “quotes” everything one “thinks is questionable” or that “might not be true” or that one could “attribute to someone else” or that one is “paraphrasing”.
And then, in workshop, one reads the poem with hand gestures! The physical air quotes matching the written ones, you see.
I’d love to see this girl do interpretive dance.