tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7719550.post5173354135920639855..comments2023-11-13T04:55:40.769-05:00Comments on Tuttle SVC: Better Get Used to This Question, KidTom Hoffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08577165613934129833noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7719550.post-75305866723112096212013-01-04T20:10:16.991-05:002013-01-04T20:10:16.991-05:00Yes, Tom, not actually teaching English for a whil...Yes, Tom, not actually teaching English for a while I seem to be more able to think like a test writer and just go with the flow! <br /><br />My feeling about this and a lot of these standards is that they're written in a particular way which makes them either very formulaic -- I was thinking you could probably write down a good set of rules for this entire sequence of standards on one single-spaced page (and then turn it into a song, maybe...) -- OR they're quite subtle, like voice slipping through the 3rd person narration. There's not a lot of inbetween.<br /><br />Tom Hoffmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08577165613934129833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7719550.post-18676222272777401282013-01-04T18:14:43.018-05:002013-01-04T18:14:43.018-05:00This is beyond nuts. Having just been teaching fic...This is beyond nuts. Having just been teaching fiction to students, one of the things that comes out most clearly about point-of-view is that changing from 1st to 3rd person *never* means losing information. It allows you a lot more power -- among other simple things it lets you describe what your character looks objectively, something that matters a lot to beginning writers.<br /><br />The first person of course enables you to develop a stronger voice and sense of personality (though lots of literary writers actually have elements of personality and voice spill through in close third person narration, truth be told). That's the only thing it allows you to do that the third person doesn't. <br /><br />Since third person narrators vary so widely in subjectivity/objectivity and in distance, the very structure of this question is completely idiotic. The one thing that seems clear is that the person writing the question has never tried to write fiction.<br /><br />I've always taken it for granted as true that grammar instruction is basically all wrong. It turns out you can teach kids grammar wrong and it doesn't do too much harm, and you can probably even teach them to ace tests with grammar questions based on woefully bad notions of grammar and it won't have any adverse effect on their writing (think of the way we've all mastered the utterly stupid notion of "adverb" as described in traditional grammar). It seems like now with Common Core we can start teaching a bunch of bullshit about fiction that is patently true -- teaching our students that third person narration is less likely to tell you how the main character feels, for example.<br /><br />My only consolation is that, if the example of grammar holds up, we at least won't be doing any harm. We'll be teaching a bunch of made up truisms that students don't understand anyway. The best of them will learn them well enough to do well on the made up tests we invent, but none of it will have anything to do with the actual skills involved.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11695483832969202754noreply@blogger.com