It is hard when you come from the part of the country that seems that everything we have been reading about has been targeted at. My parents are the cliché, “I don’t want none of that” speakers. So my dad would be the last person to correct my grammar. This brings me to a thought about changing language like we change our clothes. Indeed I change my language for a English class drastically from how I would speak at home. I catch myself saying things such as, “I have already ate” or “Where is my car at?” I know these are wrong and the second they come off my tongue it is like I am reaching out and trying to grab the words and shove them back into my mouth. I can’t help how I was raised nor can I help that I didn’t properly learn the names for all the words in a sentence.
I can however recall a time in seventh grade when my Australian English teacher expected out class to know how to diagram a sentence. We seriously didn’t know an adverb from a hole in the ground. I guess that was the first time where we got a description of the names of words. It was a little too late, and at the time I couldn’t have cared less.
The first time I guess I figured out that the names of words actually mattered was in my High School French class when I was trying to describe how these words went in a specific order. Which is hard, when I still had no clue what exactly a direct or indirect object was or how to describe how they pointed to something? GERUND PHRASE? Can someone please explain?
But does language really have to be this scripted. I mean everyone knows what you mean when you say, “I didn’t get no money today.” Just like in class we discussed who the authorities were to say what is and is not correct. Who really cares as long as it just works? I guess I am saying this because I don’t particularly care if people are wrong or not in speech. However why they are wrong interest me. If we were all correct when we spoke or wrote, then I would be left without anything to sit back and be, “Like, Whoa!” And tons of people would be without a job.
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I don't think it's that language has to be so "scripted," but that language is so inherently organized (even "bad" grammar), and so those who talk about language have developed way to talk about it. Whether those ways of talking about grammar actually help students learn it is another question.
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