I appreciated hearing Solon present on his teaching experiences in ESL 101. And, yes, I enjoyed Thea and Stephanie, too. I always like hearing about people's teaching ideas--both philosophy and methods.
So I just read the chapter out of my book Eats, Shoots & Leaves on the history of the comma. Good stuff. He explained that it was comma placement that brought about Catholics belief in purgatory vs Protestant belief in, well, jumpin' strait up to heaven when ya die:
"Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise." vs. "Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
And, he also talked about how historically all punctuation was used to help people understand how the written word should be interpreted when spoken--to indicate pause or stress. I think I'm going to assign that chapter when we get into argumentative essays. Good stuff.
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I love that book. I laughed aloud while reading different parts. Grammar is funny! Let us know about how the chapter works in your class.
ReplyDeleteFunny! Took me a while to understand the difference, re. Catholics vs. Protestants.
ReplyDeleteI am intrested in that book. Are there stories for each punctioation or is it just about comma?
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