Already have three submissions out this week!
And I have finished the following home work assignment, that I have decided to share with you. I am taking a class in linguistics. It was a class I was dreading as I concede grammar is a weakness of mine. For example, I have been criticized for writing in fragments. I choose to do that. I consider it a choice of style.
This week my professor in linguistics asked us to find and correct an example of a stylistic error. I am somewhat confused as how glaring errors in grammar can be considered stylistic, but when contemplating that I began to think of the former president, well known for grammar gaffes. The sentence I
am using as an example is in a list of Bushisms listed under that entry on Wikipedia, in the category on
education.
"Then you wake up at
the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children
are appalling." —Washington, D.C.; January 23, 2004.
I think there are
several problems with this sentence which is quite poorly constructed, but I
will focus on the one that Wikipedia is emphasizing. The president's use (or
misuse) of the word are instead of is, which is a matter of subject-verb
agreement. The term children
is plural, making the singular is grammatically incorrect.
I would rewrite the sentence as follows;
When you examine high
school test scores in America, you find that the literacy level of our children
is appalling.
I think that my example communicates the speaker’s intended message
far more effectively. He opened with a phrase that didn’t really make any
sense, and then muddled his real message with poor grammar, though it was
possible to figure out what he meant.
A writer friend says
she can find six errors in the sentence, but I am not that good. Anyone else?
If you would like to hear the statement as it was spoken in 2004 here it is;
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/multimedia/bushism_illiteracy_appalling.mp3 or it can be found on Wikipedia.