<p>Yeah, you’re right. It has to be something that was implemented since the beginning of a child’s education. I guess it’s sort of like riding a bike. You can’t just tell someone how to do it and expect them to hop onto the nearest bike and win the Tour de France. Yeah.</p>
<p>What I mean is, you can teach someone how to write coherently, not compellingly. Dan Brown, not JK Rowling, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>Latin will kill me, but not before AP Chem does.</p>
<p>Guess what, Canadian.</p>
<p>Dan Brown is so ridiculously annoying. His books have absolutely no literary merit. Anyone could take a stab at a controversial subject and become really popular.</p>
<p>Whatwhat.</p>
<p>You would laugh if you knew who sat in front of me in Latin and will inevitably ask me questions tomorrow.</p>
<p>I half-liked The Da Vinci Code. But my best friend is like, in love with it. </p>
<p>You know what makes me angry? Twilight.</p>
<p>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the best authors of all time. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves.</p>
<p>Snoop, I’m going to guess it’s one of those Canadian hippies.</p>
<p>I wish my teachers had slapped my knuckles with a ruler every time I ended a sentence with a preposition or constructed sentences that lacked subject-verb agreement. Then I wouldn’t be in this position.</p>
<p>I know a Canadian. Do you know her, yak? And no, jb.</p>
<p>My GOD THEY CENSOR EVERYTHING of an English teacher doesn’t want us to split infinitives because it’s “terrible grammar.” If he knew near as much as he likes to tell us, he would know that it is an antiquated rule dating from Latin where infinitives are one word that can’t be split. GOD.</p>
<p>Questions with subject-verb disagreements on the SAT are always particularly easy. But then they throw those damn diction problems at you that basically suck.</p>
<p>SB? NEB? Which one? Both?</p>
<p>Not emo kid isn’t in Latin. Take your guess.</p>
<p>I need to register for the sat already. I’m slow.</p>
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<p>if the kid really tries, I don’t see why not. I’ve seen students from China in my country write grammatically flawless stuff, even though they came here at like 12 years old unable to form a simple English sentence. </p>
<p>anyway, i wish i knew Latin. then one particular episode of The West Wing would have been so much powerful for me. :(</p>
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<p>hahah, well if they DID, they’d have been fired long ago! that’s an unfortunate fact. I so wish my parents disciplined me harder when I was young, but in retrospect, I would have been a monster to them if they did. just like how my younger brother is a monster now. parenting (and teaching) really is tough.</p>
<p>The ones on the SAT aren’t too bad. I’m talking about ones like this:</p>
<p>“Everyone gets their backpacks today.”</p>
<p>Technically, I think that sentence is wrong. “Everyone” is a singular subject, but “their” is plural. I guess that’s not really a subject-verb problem, though…</p>
<p>I try to avoid split infinitives, because I don’t know why. I can usually do it if I think about it, but “find out” and other such split infinitives are hard to avoid.</p>
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Yes, grammatically flawless. But not necessarily interesting, you know?</p>
<p>Interesting is hard to teach. That comes from reading other works and being influenced by them…There I go using passive voice again…</p>
<p>I registered for the October ACT. I decided to abandon the SAT ship. My 2110 will have to suffice. I do periodically check to see if it changes, but it never does. I thought about not taking the ACT writing this time around, but eh. I’ll take it just to avoid the hassle that can come with not taking it.</p>
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<p>yep not necessarily, and in fact they’re often very boring people… like myself. but anyway, didn’t we all start out like that? writing uninteresting stuff? i think China is gonna take over the world in due time so I wouldn’t be surprised if THEY manage to write very interesting stuff.</p>
<p>Maybe interesting really comes from the character and personality you’ve been dealt with in life. I’m sure many of the great novellists are supremely interesting people. I so wish I could be more interesting!!</p>
<p>That’s exactly what I’m saying.</p>
<p>Where did that pesky Canadian go?</p>
<p>and oh, I learned English at like 7 or 8 years old. but I daresay I write interesting stuff. my application essay was, anyway.</p>
<p>Jesus, Zack Morris. Jesus. You look like Jesus.</p>
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<p>you read my mind, JB. I’ve ALWAYS wondered about this, so I try to avoid using it whenever I can. If only some language master could drop by and shine a light on us.</p>
<p>It’s SB, Snoop. I remember your whole “omgomgcertamenlatinlatinSBomgomg” phase.</p>
<p>Okay, JB, what would you rather say? “Everyone gets his backpacks today”? Apart from sounding distinctly incorrect, what if there were girls in the group, sexist? “They” and “Their” are plural pronouns, but they can often be correctly applied to singular subjects.</p>
<p>For example: “Mr. Brown, there’s someone here to see you.”
“Tell them to wait a few minutes.”</p>
<p>What would you have rather said? Him? Her? Sexist. It? Humans aren’t objects.</p>
<p>This topic is often debated, but using “they” to apply to a singular noun isn’t incorrect.</p>
<p>The SAT is flawed in a number of ways. For instance, some people have been taught that nouns referring to groups of people (“committee,” for example) should treated as though they were plural. “The committee were exercising their authority,” is correct, although it may sound weird. Similarly, “The committee was exercising its authority,” is also correct. However, there have been questions on the SAT relating to topics like this one, and, although both cases were correct, one was deemed incorrect by the ETS.</p>
<p>Yeah.</p>