(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

Erk. I think I'm going to ask my Latin teacher to make us do at least some parsing on our homework, because right now we only do parsing on our tests, which is frustrating and nerve-wracking and doesn't make that much sense to me? Like, if we were used to doing it in class and/or on our homework, sure, it's something we're familiar with, but right now we only do it on tests.

(My teacher also doesn't want to call it parsing, she wants to call it identification, which seems much less specific to me? I mean, hi, we've been parsing Latin for hundreds of years now! I don't know, I learned it (with my totally old school first Latin professor) as parsing, which I always thought was the standard term.)

Comments

[darklyndsea]

What do you mean by parsing? I'm not sure whether we don't do that in my class, or if we call it differently.

[bedlamsbard]

When you take a Latin word from a sentence, and identify (if it's a noun) case, number, gender, and syntax, or (for a verb) person, number, tense, mood, voice, syntax -- basically everything it's doing in the sentence.

From the example on my review: Incipian exponere unde natura omnes res creet alatque. Creet's third person singular present subjunctive active indirect question. (I always fall apart on the syntax part, though.)

[darklyndsea]

Ah. We've done that on like two tests. Which makes me happy, because I'm better at big-picturing than saying all that stuff, even when I know it. Instincts: I...don't really understand how they work so well for me when translating.

[bedlamsbard]

I have -- slightly more experience with it, since we used to do it for homework in my first Latin class, but right now in my current class we only do it on tests and we don't really get any experience with it otherwise. And I'm not good at putting things in categories! I do not approve.

[darklyndsea]

Labeling things! Putting them into little boxes! Can't we just let them be themselves? ((okay, I think that was probably funnier/more sensical in my head...shut up, sensical is so a word))

Also, you remind me that I have homework to do for tomorrow. Curses!

[pinesandmaples]

My ladywife is doing her pedagogy class now to start teaching (French) at your uni in the fall. I'll pass the general note along to her. We talk a lot about teaching theory and things that frustrate me as a language junkie. Knowing that she needs to use each type of exercise in class, in the homework, and on the tests is a good note to give.

My big language class pet peeve is playing a song with an upbeat tempo then expecting students to hear the lyrics after one listen. I can't process songs in English that fast, much less Swedish/French/German/Russian/Japanese/Spanish/whatever fucking language I'm learning this week.

[sporky_rat]

Suzanne, meet Bed. Bed, meet Suzanne. Now you can go forth and be cheery people.

Bed, this is the person who taught me spinning. Her and her lovely wife.

I love when people meet up.

[bedlamsbard]

*dramatic sigh* I was one of, like, three people who actually did the homework that was due Wednesday, so the teacher just moved it to after spring break, which makes no sense! Because it was stuff that will be on today's test! And we didn't even get a decent review. *sniffs*

I see the point of parsing, because then you understand how every part of the sentence works, and that's helpful! But it works better IF YOU DO IT ALL THE TIME. (Let's be honest, though, my first professor told us that when he was a student he had to parse fifty words a night, so I came at it from an angle of, "This will help. Why don't we do it?")

[bedlamsbard]

I think anything that you do only on a test is -- well, nervewracking for something that's already nervewracking. We've talked about it a little, but we never do it in such an ordered way in class when we're going over the homework or cold readings, so it's not really the same thing. So I, as a student, am of the firm opinion that if anything on a test should at least be in a familiar format. (I also came at parsing, from my first Latin class, as "this is one of the most helpful exercises you can do besides translation," so it kind of bewilders me that we don't do it for homework.)

My German teacher, in high school, used to have us watch movies in German. Only they were American movies that were dubbed in German. My favorite time was when she brought in The Two Towers -- for a first year German class, for a bunch of people that had never seen Fellowship, so I was sitting there explaining (in English) what was going on to the guy next to me instead of, I don't know, hearing German. On the other hand, "manflesh" said by the orcs sounds really cool in German. Oh! Or the time we had a sub in for that class, and we were meant to be watching Pirates of the Caribbean in German, but he decided to change up the languages and the subtitles every fifteen minutes or so, so that "we would get experience at seeing movies in foreign countries." So at some point we were watching the movie in, like, Chinese with Turkish subtitles or something. In a first year German class.

...it was a whacky class. I did not learn much German.

[darklyndsea]

I don't know. I mean, yeah, it probably does help, especially for some people, but at the same time I feel like it wouldn't help me as much just because of the way I learn languages. Grammar is easy, vocabulary is hard.

[bedlamsbard]

Heh! Yeah, I know that feeling.

[bedlamsbard]

Hopefully we shall actually get to interact in person at some point in time!