I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

Empty Sandwich: Apr 22, 2008; goatse mugs

Brainworm posted:

So for your example, our choices are "There are people there" or "There are a lot there." Clearly, "people" is the noun (and so must agree with the verb), while "a lot" is an adjective and does not affect subject/verb agreement.

Rebutting this briefly before an on-topic contribution (and leaving out the second there for clarity):

"There are a lot of people."

That's the correct version.

People isn't the subject in that sentence. People is the object of the preposition, so it can't be the subject.

It's easier to see if you rearrange the sentence in the order that English sentences usually take:

"A lot of people are there."

Again, people is the object of a preposition, so it can't be the subject. The subject is lot, and it takes a plural verb because of the way it's being used here. I won't go any deeper than that, but I'll provide switcheroo examples, both of which are correct for a certain context:

"A lot of pies is up for sale." (You're at an auction, where things are being sold as lots.)

"A lot of pies are up for sale." (You're at a grocery store, where things are sold individually.)

I think the confusion comes from starting the sentence with There.

Easing into on-topic territory, I taught a section of remedial grammar at a community college. This rule is the one rule the students objected to. They'd say things like the following:

"There's three pies on the table."

"There's a bottle of beer and a pie on the table."

Both of those are wrong. It should be "There are. . .", since there are (ha!) multiple subjects. (Multiple subjects are there.)

Collective nouns swing both ways.

"The team is on its home field."

The team signed their contracts today."

Go read the part about notional agreement here:

http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/060.html

(And note that it doesn't use the conditional at the beginning of that section. Interesting.)

So, I'm an online adjunct (at a "normal" university rather than an one of the for-profit places). It works exceedingly well for comp and creative writing classes. All the ones I teach are really well designed. In fact, they're more rigorous than the already-pretty-rigorous ones I taught on campus. How would you approach a lit course if you had to teach it online?

# ¿ May 14, 2009 21:34

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 17:15

Empty Sandwich: Apr 22, 2008; goatse mugs

Ic waes gesequestered. :colbert:

Have your dreams switched over? A professor friend mentioned recently that it's common for teachers to stop having the dream where you show up for a class you've forgotten about all term and to start having the one where they show up to lecture and have no idea what the class topic is.

I've had that one once or twice, and it's kind of fun. At this point, I can bullshit on nearly anything for fifteen or twenty minutes. Not as distressing as the oh-crap-exams-are-coming-and-I've-failed dream.

How did you pick up your auxiliary languages? Are you an autodidact (in that subject or elsewhere)?

Have you thought about teaching a radically different course, just to learn something about the literature involved? It seemed a common tactic among my undergrad professors.

# ¿ May 19, 2009 12:45

Empty Sandwich: Apr 22, 2008; goatse mugs

Brainworm posted:

This is an odd one. I've never had either flavor of academic-anxiety dream, and I'd like to think it has something to do with avoiding anxiety in general. There's probably some unfounded diagnosis and more than a little arrogance in that, but I also think it speaks to something about the best way (or my best way) of approaching work. In rule form, it looks something like:

If you're working hard or feeling stressed, you're doing something wrong.

That is, I've seen the people around me basically saying "I feel some kind of anxiety about my work, so how do I manage that anxiety in a way that lets me keep working?" And that seems like exactly the wrong question. The question should probably be something more like "I'm feel anxious, which means I'm doing something to make myself feel anxious, so what is it and how can I stop?"

This is a tough question, not least because there's a sort of cultural rhetoric that equates stress and responsibility -- that is, you know you've succeeded when you have to give up the things you really want in order to do the things you know you must. I'm not sure how that way of thinking does anyone any good.

Makes good sense. I don't have nightmares, broadly speaking, and I don't have trouble sleeping. When the zombies come, I'm interested in the problem-solving aspects. I think there's a bit of lucidity there, but stress-avoidance makes sense.

Americans feel as though they must hate, or at least complain about, their jobs. Maybe it's everybody in the Western world. I love the current one.

But my version of the school dream involves a monkey-job I held for many years and have gotten (in the dream) roped into doing one more day of.

Remember, kids: nothing is as boring as someone else's dreams.

Brainworm posted:

Excepting Anglo-Saxon, I picked up my languages by dating interesting women. This isn't a tactic I'd recommend.

This would have been a good way to pick up Anglo-Saxon, now that you mention it. Tough to find a native speaker, though. . . .

# ¿ May 20, 2009 15:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.