Alternative to a Typical Daily Oral Language

I have to be completely honest; I don't really understand the assignment but I will do my best to thoroughly complete it. I need to discuss contextual differences between similar statements with different registers. People use different grammar styles according to whom they are talking to. First of all I feel i need to explain what prescriptive grammar entails. Prescriptive is a set of rules in grammar that cannot be changed, so there correct and incorrect grammar. This grammar is used when wanting to be proper and professional.  An example of prescriptive grammar can be, "I am older than she". This sentence is considered prescriptive because it uses grammar correctly. "She" is the correct rather than her because "than" is a conjunction. "Than" joins two like forms: "I am older" with "she is older", giving "I am older than she is older". But speakers leave out the last part "is older" to not repeat unnecessary words. According to prescriptive grammar, 'than' functions as a conjunction, so speakers should use "she" in that context. Descriptive on the other hand is more flexible due to many ways and styles of editing "incorrect" grammar. This is what people use when speaking outside of professional/polite environments: like when speaking to a friend or a family member. An example, opposite of the example in prescriptive grammar, is "I am older than her". The reason why is because subject pronouns are paired with a verb, on the other hand object pronouns are not. Since the phrase "than her" doesn't have a verb we can see or hear, some people choose an object pronoun.

This will help my students because learning about these two styles in grammar they will be able to choose which is appropriate in registers they use. Everything I stated above are the tools they need to know in order to know the difference between two commonly used grammar settings: Prescriptive and Descriptive. So to continue with this activity my assignment is to use different registers and choose which type of grammar I want to use to say what I want to say.

Sentence1: I am going to prepare dinner.
Close friend register: Ima cook dinner.
General friend register: I'm gonna cook dinner
Parent register: I'm going to cook dinner. or Voy senar (I am going to eat dinner).

Sentence 1 is prescriptive because it uses the correct vocabulary/ grammar. The other sentences are either using incorrect grammar/vocabulary or less formal.

Ellipses . . . my favorite!

Grammar has always been a subject in school I have never really learned to keep in mind. Although I have had new light shed on the punctuation of ellipses. All through my schooling I was taught it was not a real punctuation but rather something "lazy" writers use to write less; I was taught to believe the ellipses should never be used in any writing what so ever. Teachers also went to great lengths as to not use the name ellipses but rather call them “the three consecutive periods”. I was extremely relieved when I learned that ellipses are acceptable punctuations . . . when used appropriately.

Along with this, the one concept I want to teach my students are the ellipses. I do not want my students to be afraid of looking “lazy” or unprofessional when using ellipses; so I will explain to them the appropriate times to use them and when they get the hang of it, maybe intentionally bend the rules when using them. I have to be completely honest; I will be using the “More Nitty-Gritty Grammar” book when teaching my students. In explaining to them what ellipses can be used for I will start out by simply telling them to use them when: indicating you are omitting information, shorten a sentence, or to indicate a hesitation of some sort in your writing. Once the students understand the basic I will get more detailed and answer their questions when they have any. If my teachers took the time to teach me about the appropriate way of using ellipses my writing could have been less restrained; but now that I know, I am more willing to write what I think and feel.

I still have difficulty using the colon and semicolon so I thought I should use it in my “pattern-of-the-week”. I understand what they both do but I still struggle to know as to when to use which punctuation. Ellipses are now my favorite punctuation so I also threw it in my blog and I hope I used it correctly . . . let me know if I did or didn’t.