"at" at the end of a where phrase

[Patti Kurtz]

write at SCN.ORG wrote:

>I teach 8th grade.  This thread makes me feel as if I should never correct
>my students writing.
>
Okay, I'm not a linguist per se, but an English prof, but my feelings
are that a9 it's okay to show students what's expected in "Standard
written English" as long as we don't disparage their own dialects in the
process.  Students can learn to style shift very readily-- the problem,
I think, that Dennis and the others are focusing on is the view that one
dialect (the mythical standard) is somehow "better" than the others.
Plus speech and writing are very different-- we speak (as a rule) much
more informally than we write.  And a lot of writing has to do with
audience.  What are the students writing to who? (or should that be
whom?)  Anyhow, I think as a teacher, it's important to teach the
conventions of written standard English, but to do so in a  way that
doesn't make students ashamed of the way they talk.  Students should
also realize that there may be a time or place in writing for dialect
and casual usage-- such as e mails, letters to friends, fiction, etc.
The key I think is in not labeling variants as "bad English" but as
variants which may not be accepted by the academic community.

Okay, that's  my 2 cents.

Patti Kurtz
English Department
Minot State University
Minot, ND

> No doubt, I will think something is wrong that
>really isn't, or is so common that I should just ignore it.  Where is
>there help for teachers who were never trained about language themselves?
>Jan
>
>

--

If  you write nothing, nothing is what you end up with!



Joseph Bruchac