Sarah's new book is out.

[JesusFightClub]

Huh? When and where did I say that? This is my first foray into the discussion, and I noticed the part I mentioned......that's all.

As far as a lapse into dialect, where I was raised, it was not unusual to use the "was meaning" phrase being discussed here. Where did you get I was even talking about that? Maybe you should read back a bit further....read the thread.

What does that have to do with people I know? If a person is going to write a book, minimally correct grammar is a requirement.

Subject/verb agreement has been around forever and to my knowledge has not changed. If you have discovered it has evolved, please provide the source.

Truthfully, I don't see the grammar thing as anything important to discuss--just pointing out the obvious in a discussion that was focused more on regional dialect masquerading as one on correct grammar, when the obvious grammatical mistake is glaring but unmentioned.

Um, I have read the thread. Even non grammar geniuses can read, y'know. And you were specifically criticising my example of English native spoken dialogue with a flavour of Scots in it. Because apparently the grammar was all wrong. Duh. I guess we in Forign Lands ar dum and can't speak our own languages correctly.

Sarah Maxwell is unlikely to have a competent proofreader, to say the least. And as I repeatedly have tried to explain, Scots is a valid language in its own right. Her constructions aren't wrong, they just aren't mainstream English and may be influenced by SOTDRT or just dialect where she lives. She needs to have this corrected for a wider audience but srsly is this the worst thing about the Maxwells?

[Beb]

Um, I have read the thread. Even non grammar geniuses can read, y'know. And you were specifically criticising my example of English native spoken dialogue with a flavour of Scots in it. Because apparently the grammar was all wrong. Duh. I guess we in Forign Lands ar dum and can't speak our own languages correctly.

Oh, well, I see what you're saying--that was yourexample.

hmmm

Nevertheless.......learn.

I agree with you on the regional dialect issue.

Otherwise, cry me a river.

Sarah Maxwell is unlikely to have a competent proofreader, to say the least. And as I repeatedly have tried to explain, Scots is a valid language in its own right. Her constructions aren't wrong, they just aren't mainstream English and may be influenced by SOTDRT or just dialect where she lives. She needs to have this corrected for a wider audience but srsly is this the worst thing about the Maxwells?

Couldn't agree more with all of this.

[pomology]

A commenter on the Maxwell's site had this to say:

Cheryl in VA says:

November 26, 2011 at 2:35 pm

I was worried about your grammar at first (Winter Days is Here) …then as I read I decided you knew what you were doing afterall :-)

Had Sarah known to put her book title in italics, she wouldn't have had this problem. I guess they didn't teach that in her homeschool curriculum.

To be fair, Sarah did put the book title in italics in the body of the entry. The phrase "Winter Days is Here" appears in the title, where it is entirely possible she wasn't able to put it in italics.

[JesusFightClub]

Beb, learn? Learn what? D'you mean me or Sarah M?

And you didn't read the thread properly, which you told me to do, so consider less handslappery in future.

Put away the petted lip. See if the wind changes? You'll stick like that. ;)

[kunoichi66]

I'm with jesusfightclub - learn what? That is a valid subject-verb agreement. At least in Scots, which was the original point.

[Olivia]

I feel sorry for her. To become a good writer, you have to read widely in your genre (and outside it), as well as writing often (which Sarah is certainly doing). It's really not optional. And she's writing children's books. Would it really be that harmful if she read widely from the children's section of the library? What's she going to encounter?

And of course, writing classes, a writer's group, writers' internet forums, reading books about craft, etc. would all be beneficial as well. If I were 30 and unmarried, I'd hie myself off to a MFA program, personally...

[fundiefan]

I feel sorry for her. To become a good writer, you have to read widely in your genre (and outside it), as well as writing often (which Sarah is certainly doing). It's really not optional. And she's writing children's books. Would it really be that harmful if she read widely from the children's section of the library? What's she going to encounter?

And of course, writing classes, a writer's group, writers' internet forums, reading books about craft, etc. would all be beneficial as well. If I were 30 and unmarried, I'd hie myself off to a MFA program, personally...

To get into that MFA program, you must have completed a bachelors degree program. To complete a bachelors program, you have to attend college and be exposed to ideas, thoughts and people outside your father's bubble.

Normal people who want to write will get involved and work hard and push themselves; inside and outside their comfort zone. Sarah doesn't have that option. No MFA for her because she is not allowed to do all that would precede that.

[ChunkyBarbie]

Can I just put in a small plea for poor old Comic Sans?

It's one of the few fonts that has the 'a' and the 'g' the way we teach children to write them so it's much less confusing for the children when they learn to write . . .

Especially for the lower ability kids and the literal minded who don't get the difference between this 'a' and the 'a' we teach them in handwriting!

THIS! I use Comic Sans all the time when I create work papers, class books, etc.

[marmalade]

As someone said earlier in this thread, she writes well enough to get through an English 101 class in college.

Maybe at a community college. But I don't think her writing would pass muster in even a high school AP English class and certainly not the R1A writing courses at my university (for students who didn't take an AP class in high school). I know some of the instructors at my university (mostly grad students and a couple lecturers waiting on Associate Prof. status) and they are tough-ass cookies. But once you complete their classes, bitching all the way, your writing and focus will have improved a thousand fold. Thank goodness I never had to take their remedial classes!

[Austin]

Maybe at a community college. But I don't think her writing would pass muster in even a high school AP English class and certainly not the R1A writing courses at my university (for students who didn't take an AP class in high school). I know some of the instructors at my university (mostly grad students and a couple lecturers waiting on Associate Prof. status) and they are tough-ass cookies. But once you complete their classes, bitching all the way, your writing and focus will have improved a thousand fold. Thank goodness I never had to take their remedial classes!

What's the deal with dissing community colleges? Many, many smart young people are taking the community college route, particularly for their gen ed classes, because of the debt they would have to incur otherwise. From what I've seen, their instruction is every bit as good or better than my university instruction was, and their class sizes are much smaller.

[skankbiscuit]

I think her writing style is very awkward to read. I find myself re-reading things she writes in the blog quite a bit because I don't get what she is trying to say the 1st time. She is also the QUEEN of the run-on sentence. :lol:

[VodouDoll]

I don't think her writing would pass muster in even a high school AP English class and certainly not the R1A writing courses at my university

I agree with this. Sarah's writing definitely wouldn't have been considered college-level at my university or in my high school AP English class. Her sentence construction is stilted, her imprecise word choices mean her meaning is often unclear, and in my opinion her prose shows very little facility of style. She might have the potential to be a good writer, but IMO right now she doesn't have real dexterity with or command of the language, even if she did have interesting ideas to express, which she doesn't.

[FloraDoraDolly]

Maybe at a community college. But I don't think her writing would pass muster in even a high school AP English class and certainly not the R1A writing courses at my university (for students who didn't take an AP class in high school). I know some of the instructors at my university (mostly grad students and a couple lecturers waiting on Associate Prof. status) and they are tough-ass cookies. But once you complete their classes, bitching all the way, your writing and focus will have improved a thousand fold. Thank goodness I never had to take their remedial classes!

I went to a state university where Sarah could easily pass the basic, freshman-level English classes. When I was in school, I often read my fellow students' term papers, and some of their writing was pretty bad, especially if they were graduates from the Detroit Public Schools. I haven't seen any lengthy examples of Sarah's expository writing, but her fiction indicates that she knows what a complete sentence is and she can produce a coherent piece of writing with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This puts her above the remedial level students. Would Sarah be able to get an A on her first day in English 101? Probably not. But I have every reason to believe that she would come to class, do her assignments, and turn them in on time. By the end of the semester, she would have mastered college-level writing.

If I were helping Sarah get through her first year of college, my main concern would be the content of her writing more so than the mechanics. There are so many books she hasn't read, so many ideas that were never allowed to enter her mind. She would need a lot of help in learning how to read critically. And the culture shock! Even the foreign students know more about American culture than Sarah does. For example, I remember taking a 500-level English class in the 1990s where a student from Colombia asked the professor why Alanis Morissette's music is considered post-feminist rather than feminist. Poor Sarah would have been lost in that classroom!

[divadivine]

I went to a state university where Sarah could easily pass the basic, freshman-level English classes. When I was in school, I often read my fellow students' term papers, and some of their writing was pretty bad, especially if they were graduates from the Detroit Public Schools. I haven't seen any lengthy examples of Sarah's expository writing, but her fiction indicates that she knows what a complete sentence is and she can produce a coherent piece of writing with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This puts her above the remedial level students. Would Sarah be able to get an A on her first day in English 101? Probably not. But I have every reason to believe that she would come to class, do her assignments, and turn them in on time. By the end of the semester, she would have mastered college-level writing.

If I were helping Sarah get through her first year of college, my main concern would be the content of her writing more so than the mechanics. There are so many books she hasn't read, so many ideas that were never allowed to enter her mind. She would need a lot of help in learning how to read critically. And the culture shock! Even the foreign students know more about American culture than Sarah does. For example, I remember taking a 500-level English class in the 1990s where a student from Colombia asked the professor why Alanis Morissette's music is considered post-feminist rather than feminist. Poor Sarah would have been lost in that classroom!

She's likely flip out if someone with tattoos, piercings, green hair [ mwhahahaha Erin Bates] and defrauding clothing walked in and sat down next to her. Imagine if she had to read something like The Handmaid's Tale as her first reading assignment- that was the first reading assignment I had for Freshman English back in 1993 [back in the day] and being a girl from the farm who led a somewhat sheltered life, it was sort of culture shock. And I was by no means as sheltered as Sarah Maxwell- I went to public school, listened to radio, read regular books my whole life [scarlet Letter, Go Ask Alice, all the Judy Blume books, etc]. College was a little bit of a shock to me. I went to a small, Baptist affiliated college which happened to be quite liberal. [Yes, Baptist and liberal.... who'd have ever thought those two words would have been used in the same sentence.] One of my classmates "came out" in the large metropolitan newspaper one weekend [in an article about those living alternative lifestyles. Please remember this was in the early to mid 90's, so that was a big deal back then.] that was something I had never dealt with in my tiny farming town. So, Sarah Maxwell would need to go off and spend some time in Uriah getting right with God after five minutes on a college campus. Not that Poppa Steve-O would ever let her actually go to college, but it's a fun thought.

[YPestis]

We can speculate all we want about how Sarah's writing could improve with a few writing classes a exposure to other literature. It won't happen unless Sarah can marry someone more enlightened than her dad. Sarah's best bet is to attract a widower who wants a mother for his young children, who isn't as crazy as Steve, who will see her interest in writing and introduce her to a local book club or something.

If something like the above does happen, I don't see this ending well. I think it's a sure bet that Sarah will acquire more "worldly" thinking with a broader exposure and Steve and Teri will see that as a threat to their other kids. Steve and Teri have written about the importance of protecting children from even other family members. I can see Sarah being ostracized and kept at arm's length if she decides to think outside of the Maxwell bubble.

[gustava]

What's the deal with dissing community colleges? Many, many smart young people are taking the community college route, particularly for their gen ed classes, because of the debt they would have to incur otherwise. From what I've seen, their instruction is every bit as good or better than my university instruction was, and their class sizes are much smaller.

I dun been ona them community colegge tchrs, fer many yrs asnd i recent whut u sayin'.

[deborahlynn1979]

Both Teri & Steve are college graduates, they should know their grammer better.

I don't know if this was intentional or not, but it made me giggle.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

Has there ever been a Maxwell post that listed books (Beyond the Bible and Maxwell-authored "books) that their kids were allowed to read???

[Guest Anonymous]

I don't know if this was intentional or not, but it made me giggle.

Grammer lives in a nursing home in the next state - that's why they don't know her better..... :lol:

[gustava]

Grammer lives in a nursing home in the next state - that's why they don't know her better..... :lol:

Guess the semi-colon lives in another country.

[denimjumper]

I liked the part where mom answered the phone only because she knew it was daddy calling. We all know daddy would rip mommy a new one if he caught her answering the phone when a stranger called.

[VodouDoll]

Seriously, right? What if mommy defrauded a telemarketer or something with her female voice?

[NurseNell]

I was dumpster diving last night in our paper recycling dumpster to get more Target flyers with my grandson's first photo shoot in it, and I found this book, brand new: The Longman Writer's Companion, custom edition for the University of Minnesota. Should I send it to Sarah? Yes, I kept it.

[marmalade]

I dun been ona them community colegge tchrs, fer many yrs asnd i recent whut u sayin'.

I'm not dissing CC's at all. When I went back to school, I took my English 1A requirements there, because none of my high school courses counted on my transcript (except foreign language...go figure). The CC curriculum was FAR easier than what students have to endure at the university I transferred to, if they didn't test out in high school. At the university, it's essentially a lower-division English survey class; about 8 books, 2-3 papers, plus exercises. By comparison, my CC class only required us to read ONE novel; we mostly wrote critiques on essays and short stories. English 1B (also taken at the CC level, required for English majors) didn't challenge me either.

Needless to say, when I transferred, although I was warned at orientation, every transfer I know got "sticker shock" upon receipt of their first paper at the university (our English grad dept. is tops in the nation, so yeah, it's tough). I thought because I got A's that I was doing things right. NOT. First paper? B-. Paper turned in a couple weeks (much wiser) in another class? A-. It was a tough learning curve, but a necessary one that I never could have navigated without cultural cues and the ability to discuss my work with people outside my family.

Sarah might be okay at a community college, but she'd be missing so many cultural cues. I don't know if she could empathize with characters whose background is nothing like hers, even white females. Forget Amy Tan or Toni Morrison. Or even Jane Austen or the Brontes (with their steadfast, Christian heroines in many cases), read with a critical eye.

[emmiedahl]

I took English 1A at a community college and had to read many, many books (including The Woman Warrior, which is a hard one to get through and definitely offers a non-Western perspective) and write many, many papers. I am at a university now and don't find the work any more rigorous. Some classes, like Biochemistry, are harder just because they are upper division science classes. My Bio teacher (at community college) was a beast, so in many ways I feel better prepared than some of my classmates.

I am taking Sociology 101 right now and find it to be easier than the people who took it at my former community college seemed to find it. Maybe it is because I am taking it with science classes and it feels easy by default? I spend maybe an hour total on it per week, including the lectures, and I am getting an A (knock on wood). Everyone is complaining about the reading/writing in my Anthro/Gender class and I am like, quitcher bitching, this is the easiest and most awesome class evah!