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You Asked Me This Question / Re: Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 25, 2010, 08:18:58 PM »

I don't think so. I studied at a private high school, and the English classes I had were okay. It may just be my current school ... or maybe I've just become more sensitive to these things lately that I never really noticed back then.

Also, what I don't get is how my English professor can be the editor-in-chief of a magazine, aside from her many other writerly-related credentials, and NOT see the difference between "nearly" and "whole." She also gave a lecture on how "Filipino English" is bad, and yet many of the errors in her book constitute that which she impugns.

Actually, I may have to agree with Mr. Alvarez that the English instruction in the Philippines may have deteriorated. Our lesson proper consists of my professor's life (which is inclusive of her love interests, her many accomplishments, and her so-called writerly exploits) and only snippets about English. She even talks in Enggalog for about 50% of the time she spends in the classroom.

The subject she teaches us involves only the "thinking skills in English," but, I don't know, does that grant her freedom to use both languages? I mean, sure, maybe if her students couldn't understand English and she had to go back to basics, but in this case, it just makes her look hypocritical (both because of her badly-written book and the way she teaches).

And, again, I must emphasize that she even blamed "the typist" for the many errors in the book, which is just plain stupid, as most of the errors had little to do with spelling and spacing, and more, grammar. It is the writer's duty to edit the book if an editor is unavailable.

So, yes, maybe the English instruction in the Philippines has deteriorated after all....

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 21, 2010, 08:06:14 PM »

Oh, thank god! I study at a public school, and I hope they invited the professors at our college. They could learn a thing or two. I mean, not all of them. Just the ones that write for more income (and then force us students to buy and read their books).

So, basically, CHED has no say in this?

I hope they know the authors/professors are (figuratively) shoving error-riddled books down our throats where I'm from. Is there any way for a non-education-official like me to attend the seminar, so I may address the concern? Or could somebody else do it for me? I would really like the government to know what's going on.

But you know, I can't really blame my English professor now, after I found out our college wasn't giving her and the other faculty members proper wages. I mean, they have to come up with income-generating projects, like books. And since no one in his right mind would dare buy a clearly badly-written book, the authors sick 'em on the students.

I study at a state university, and the government basically funds all the expenses. The way I see it, if they'd have provided public schools with enough money to pay their teachers, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.  I mean, it's probably not that they don't, but you know....

Oh, and my English professor found out about her book being butchered on the Internet. I have yet to see how she reacts.  I don't even know how she found out. I haven't even mentioned her name or her book's! (Maybe it was the "burning" that gave me away.) 

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 20, 2010, 12:14:33 AM »

But doesn't a book contain pages just as a house has rooms in it?

***

And I just have to ask. Is a gerund classified as a noun or a verb? I know it's essentially a verb that's used as another part of speech (a verbal), but there was an activity in the book where you had to get certain words of each part of speech (particularly a "Verb," a "Noun/Object," and a "Prepositional Phrase") from each part of a book.

(And, also, it just says in the instructions, that we may use "any book," and not "any non-fiction book," because a fiction book would not contain most of the parts which we had to check the words for.)

So, anyway, I had no problem with it, except for the last item, which was to check the "References" part of the book. As you may well know, that part of the book contains only titles of books the writer used as reference in writing his work, and you can just imagine how difficult it was looking for verbs in all the titles and names.

Some titles in our English book's "References" section are: "Contexts: Writing and Reading," "Psychic Reading with an Architect," and "Teaching Children Literary Skills in a Second Language."

My classmates put the gerunds under "Verb," but I argued that they didn't function as verbs in the books' titles.

And I seriously didn't get the whole point in suddenly focusing on grammar when the section of the book was clearly discussing the parts of a book, and more specifically, a non-fiction book. 

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 17, 2010, 01:35:17 AM »

I sort of agree, but when the bad grammar and terrible semantic sensitivity the authors have in writing the book affect my grades, that's where I draw the line! Just this week, we had a seat work, and I failed, with only seven out of fifteen questions right.

The analogy part of the exercise has three questionable questions (no pun intended):

"1. Author:Writer

A. Publisher:Printer
B. Reader:Scholar
C. Lawyer:Litigant
D. Doctor:Patient"

I was sure the closest pair was A. Can you imagine my shock when the professor said it was B? *facedesk*

"2. Book:Page

A. House:Room
B. Sea:Ship
C. Rooster:Hen
D. Title:Content"

I answered A. The "correct" answer was B.

"3. Evaluate:Examine

A. Scope:Distance
B. Study:Probe
C. Rehearse:Exercise
D. Summarize:Recap"

I answered B (but C and D are possible answers, too), but the professor said the correct answer was A. This is wrong in so many levels, especially since the given pair are verbs and choice A has nouns. That isn't analogically correct, is it?

Shocking, really. It's as if we were meant to choose the pair least likely to match the given pair, sort of like an anti-analogy test. But the thing is, there weren't any instructions. It just has the test title in bold text, "B. ANALOGY," and nothing else. The author was really careless here. 

But then it becomes less a question on neglecting to put instructions than a question on whether or not the writers actually know what they're doing. Take these questions from the sentence completion test for example:

"1. The introductory part of the book which often summarizes the purpose of writing can be referred to as ________ or __________.

A. Index ... Glossary
B. Front Cover ... Title Page
C. Details of publication ... copyright
D. Preface ... Foreword"

Firstly, the "often" there is unnecessary. I mean, if that's the part's function, then why should it NOT "often" serve its purpose, right? The writers of the book obviously don't know how to use adverbs efficiently; and ironically, there is a section on Rhetorics in the book!

Second, the sentence is missing two "the" determiners before each blank.

Lastly, our professor said the answer was B, when I was convinced it was D.

And then:

"5. This indicates the materials used in the texts and shows whether the writer is up-to-date and thorough in his approach. This is ___________.

A. Glossary
B. Bibliography
C. Acknowledgements
D. Contents"

So, our prof got the answer right (I think), with B. But then, the sentence structure is a bit offish:

1) "Whether" is usually accompanied with an "or" statement, as in "whether or not..." or "whether ... or...."

2) It's missing a "the" determiner before the blank.

3) It's just plain offensive and hypocritical to me, as a writer myself. (So, that was a bit subjective, but can you blame me?)



After all these, I thought that maybe the answer key had typos, but then I remembered that even if there were typos, our English professor should've been aware of all these things as a COLLEGE PROFESSOR.

And the worst part is that she genuinely doesn't have any idea about these errors.

I really want to approach her and just give her my copy, which I edited, but I don't want to seem impertinent, and also as I am afraid of getting a 5 at the end of the semester.

But I am appalled at her blaming the typist for these errors. Sure, spelling is still excusable, but you have to draw a line for the grammar and semantics of what they "write."

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that the mean, old professor doesn't let students take the quizzes in the book unless they've bought a copy for themselves, which is why I can't really burn it. I have since referred to commenting on it here as figuratively burning it.

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You Asked Me This Question / Re: Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 14, 2010, 09:16:04 PM »

"Many of the errors in the workbooks are obviously encoding errors that could have been caught by proofreading. A [G]ood editing would have done wonders for the workbooks." I actually don't have any problem with workbooks being badly-written, as long as they're not about English-usage. And, sure, I guess they make a valid point there, saying a badly-written book is better than no book, but it just ticks me off that they force that stuff on students.

***

I've finished reading the whole book. Not all of it is badly-written; I figure it's just the parts that one terrible writer wrote. Although, I do have to say that even the parts that were "okay" lack proper editing, with all the orphans and widows, and annoying mid-paragraph breaks -- oh, and don't get me started on the alignment! They could have at least proofread it.

Also, there was this section on how to write summaries. They used a summary of Twilight that was taken off some site. The URL was scattered across the page, which made me question if the writers knew what a bibliography was. Plus, why Twilight? Couldn't they have used Literary Fiction? It's not that I despise Twilight (and that's not to say that I don't), but wouldn't a book like "Tuesdays with Morrie" or "The Five People you meet in Heaven" make more sense in a college-based workbook? Sure, it easily captures the attention of its teenage readers, but a terribly written summary of half of Twilight taken off some shady website? 

The exercise after the section begins with the phrase, "Assuming all of you have read Twilight[...]." And then I couldn't read on without cringing.

And then there's another multiple choice question in the Critical Reading section (before which were paragraphs you had to read to answer said questions):

"3. 'He felt that something ominous is about to happen.' Ominous means _______.

a. Good
b. Evil
c. Jolly
d. Great"

I tell you, it's like reading a book meant for grade-schoolers; and also, that's supposed to be "was" there, right?

***

Once, our professor corrected part of a paragraph in the book, in class. I guess that's all good, but I couldn't help laughing silently to myself.

6

Badly Written, Badly Spoken / The Boat is sinking

« on: July 13, 2010, 06:09:17 PM »

I take the ferry to school every day, and I always pass by this sign. It says, "It is prohibited by law to take out of the boat lifesaving apparatus except for intended use."



To be honest, I had to read it a good six times to get what it was trying to say.

"Out of the boat" is misplaced, but that's an easy fix. What I don't know is where "except for intended use" fits into the puzzle -- or for that matter, what the "intended use" is. Plus, couldn't they have just put "life vests" or "life jackets" instead of the pompous "lifesaving apparatus"? And, "prohibited by law"...? 

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You Asked Me This Question / Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 07, 2010, 12:44:01 AM »

Hi there,

In our English class, we were forced to buy an English book written by the professors of the college in which I study. I have no problem with that and the fact that the number one rule at school is "nothing is compulsory," but the thing is that it's terribly written. I lost two points off an exercise because of a 'stray' adverb.

In the chapter passage it says: "It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary" (or something like that).

But in the True or False exercise, it says, "It would take nearly three days to read the English dictionary."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't "whole" and "nearly" two different things?

And here's another brilliant one:

"1. English continues to grow through borrowing, which means ______.

a. inventing
b. buying
c. acquiring
d. lending"

I was convinced the correct answer was "c. acquiring." Imagine my surprise when our English prof said it was "d. lending."

College may be all too new for me but even I know that lending and borrowing don't mean the same thing.

Furthermore, upon inspection (i.e., visually editing the book and leaving proofread marks), the monstrosity should not have been published and forced upon the minds of students in the college I go to.

Now, how would a freshman student like me go about fixing this (if the question is at all appropriate where I posted this)?