Let's Play Teacher
Well, I may not have told you on here, but my mom's planning on becoming a self-employed english teacher...working out of our home, of all places. Anyway, she's made up lessons and lesson plans and levels and whatnot already, and right now, she's having me proof-read both levels (level one and level two. xD), which are basically binders with a million papers in them each. Now, as fun as that all sounds, you know, reading lesson plans and correcting whatever typing/spelling mistakes I find, I also have to do the exercises in the back of the books, to make sure that they're understandable (and, of course, to check for any spelling mistakes and whatnot). And as I'm doing these exercises, I'm slowly coming to the realization that the english language is sometimes insanely easy and at other times insanely stupid and slang-like.
For example:
Negate the following sentences:
...
You never ordered a side dish.
How do you negate an already negative sentence? I mean, I asked my mom what exactly she meant there, but still. You wouldn't actually say to someone "You didn't ever order a side dish." Most english people are simply to lazy too break never into two words. This is actually a good example of what I meant by finding mistakes in the lessons. I mean, to a native English speaker, it's pretty obvious what you could do with that sentence, but she didn't explain exactly what she wanted them to do, she just told them to negate the sentences. What she really wanted was for them to negate the VERBS in the sentences (i.e. 'didn't ever')...anyway, we ended up changing the whole sentence to something else (I forget what, even though it was just yesterday).
But I'm doing Medical Vocabulary right now, which is also pretty hard. She has a huge box at the top of the page (at or on the top of the page? o.O) which has various medical words in it (i.e. coughing, surgery, chicken pox, rash, etc.) and then under it she placed four questions.
Which are diseases or illnesses?
Which are symptoms of an illness?
Which are treatments for a sickness?
Which are diagnostic tools (there's an explanation for diagnostic tools on this one, but if you're reading this, you probably already know what they are. ^^)?
For most of those questions and words, it's pretty clear what's what, but for things like diarrhea and nose bleeds, well...it could be either a symptom or an illness. I mean, you can get a nose bleed as a result of an injury to the nose, or you could get one because you're up too high and the air is too thin for you. Symptom or illness? And internal bleeding. That's neither sickness nor illness. It's technically not a symptom, either. It's an aftereffect of a serious collision (probably). Unless, of course, you have an illness where the veins and arteries get blod clots or rupture, then you'll have internal bleeding and it'd most likely be a symptom. But you can't categorize it as either or because you don't know the context in which you have the internal bleeding, can you? The same with a rash. You could get a rash because of allergies, which would make it a symptom, or you can get a rash just like that, which would make it an illness (or at least a mild sickness). Or a fever. Most people would say that's a sickness, but it's really just a symptom. It's annoying, is what it is.
And is surgery a diagnostic tool (exploratory surgery, biopsy, for example) or a treatment? And an IV. You can use an IV to see if there's any internal bleeding inside your stomach, but is that then a diagnostic tool or a treatment? I think I've been watching too much ER and MASH...
Aaaaaanyway, that ends my rant for this week (hopefully xP) ^^.
--Cassy
For example:
Negate the following sentences:
...
You never ordered a side dish.
How do you negate an already negative sentence? I mean, I asked my mom what exactly she meant there, but still. You wouldn't actually say to someone "You didn't ever order a side dish." Most english people are simply to lazy too break never into two words. This is actually a good example of what I meant by finding mistakes in the lessons. I mean, to a native English speaker, it's pretty obvious what you could do with that sentence, but she didn't explain exactly what she wanted them to do, she just told them to negate the sentences. What she really wanted was for them to negate the VERBS in the sentences (i.e. 'didn't ever')...anyway, we ended up changing the whole sentence to something else (I forget what, even though it was just yesterday).
But I'm doing Medical Vocabulary right now, which is also pretty hard. She has a huge box at the top of the page (at or on the top of the page? o.O) which has various medical words in it (i.e. coughing, surgery, chicken pox, rash, etc.) and then under it she placed four questions.
Which are diseases or illnesses?
Which are symptoms of an illness?
Which are treatments for a sickness?
Which are diagnostic tools (there's an explanation for diagnostic tools on this one, but if you're reading this, you probably already know what they are. ^^)?
For most of those questions and words, it's pretty clear what's what, but for things like diarrhea and nose bleeds, well...it could be either a symptom or an illness. I mean, you can get a nose bleed as a result of an injury to the nose, or you could get one because you're up too high and the air is too thin for you. Symptom or illness? And internal bleeding. That's neither sickness nor illness. It's technically not a symptom, either. It's an aftereffect of a serious collision (probably). Unless, of course, you have an illness where the veins and arteries get blod clots or rupture, then you'll have internal bleeding and it'd most likely be a symptom. But you can't categorize it as either or because you don't know the context in which you have the internal bleeding, can you? The same with a rash. You could get a rash because of allergies, which would make it a symptom, or you can get a rash just like that, which would make it an illness (or at least a mild sickness). Or a fever. Most people would say that's a sickness, but it's really just a symptom. It's annoying, is what it is.
And is surgery a diagnostic tool (exploratory surgery, biopsy, for example) or a treatment? And an IV. You can use an IV to see if there's any internal bleeding inside your stomach, but is that then a diagnostic tool or a treatment? I think I've been watching too much ER and MASH...
Aaaaaanyway, that ends my rant for this week (hopefully xP) ^^.
--Cassy
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