I don’t know about you, but I was hampered by an English composition teacher who was excessively grouchy and shouted a lot. Her big thing was prepositional phrases – She made you dog-ear the two pages in the textbook with the list of prepositions. Our entire 7th grade class was required to memorize the list of prepositions.
In 8th grade, we were required – again – to do nothing more than memorize the entire list of prepositions from exactly the same textbook.
In 9th grade, the same teacher assigned us… you guessed it.
I so despise the word preposition to this day that the mention of it makes me grit my teeth.
And no – I cannot stand up before you and give you the entire list. 1977-1979 was a long time ago, and we were NEVER told WHY we had to memorize the list (“5 Surprising Benefits of Memorizing Every Preposition on the face of the earth!”).
I am a writer – and thanks to that teacher, I cannot remember any parts of speech besides verb, noun, object, subject. All those other words? No clue. Have to look them up.
Since apparently schools seem to employ curmudgeonly people to teach English Grammar, this seems to be widespread.
So, what’s a participle? How does it work? What’s a conjunction? I know thanks to TV commercials that a conjunction hooks up words, phrases and clauses.
Here’s answers to at least two of your burning questions.
Adverbs describe or modify everything except a noun. “He ran quickly” (quickly modifies or describes ‘ran’).
Adjectives modify or describe nouns. “The pink balloon.” (pink modifies or describes the noun balloon)
“What? That’s EASY!”
See? You didn’t have to memorize ANYTHING!!!!
Now available to teach your seventh grade English class. Your in class assignment – look out the window.
