What are some of the problems encountered in teaching Creative Writing?
When teaching writing, it's not so much the technical aspects, like the grammar and structure that's hard to relay, so much as the active listening and observation of human nature.I must be sentient, to observe with awareness and listen actively, to know what to write.Then I must discern what I want to share about the human experience based on this learning.The structure is important in this: the order of words in sentences, and then the order of sentences, must be dropped like breadcrumbs for others to navigate my thought process.You're turning on hearts through the mind, so readers get a sense of what you see. What you feel. To make intellectual, what is emotional amd sensuous, is the art.All of writing is music and meaning. There is no creativity without strategy.Everything else is indulgent flatulence.
Do most Germans really think the Roth excerpt used in this article uses archaic vocabulary? If so, what English words seem archaic to you, and why?
The article quotes a passage from "Call It Sleep" about the Statue of Liberty.I would not call the passage's language archaic (a word I would apply to the English of Chaucer and Shakespeare), but I would call it old-fashioned and very poetic, and therefore extremely difficult for a non-native speaker. The difficulty isn't in the words taken singly, but in the complex and unusual construction of the sentences. The prose follows poetic patterns which are not found in modern spoken or written English.I'm a native speaker of American English (and I actually read "Call It Sleep" as a teen; I was embarrassed by a scene in which a neighborhood girl wants the young hero to touch her knish while she touches his p'etzel ) and even I had to read the quoted paragraph twice this time around, to get a feel for the grammatical conventions it was following. If you read the book from the beginning, you can quickly adapt to its patterns. But because it's unlike modern English, plunging into a random paragraph is a bit like jumping into ice water.The crux of the matter is that no foreign student of English would ever need to read such stylized, old-fashioned, poetic English - unless she was planning a career in literary criticism or literary translation. It just is not necessary in daily conversation, or for reading newspapers or modern American fiction. It's also not necessary for understanding medical or mathematical texts and articles - which have plenty of jargon but employ modern sentence construction and are as unpoetic as possible.Additional note: Probably two-thirds of Americans would be unsure of the word "rowel" (our cowboys wear spurs, and we don't get more specific than that) and would therefore be completely lost by "roweling." I have a suspicion rowels are more familiar to the British.
Can you tell me a little bit 'bout educational system in America?What I need to do to become a good student?
Not all US high schools are as bad as that other poster made them out to be. I should know, I went to one. The problem most of the bad schools have isthat they are filled with stupid poor people. Avoid inner city schools. In general what you want to do to be a good student is just make the teachers think you are trying hard. If you do that they will grade you easier and give you the benfit of the doubt in most circumstances. Yes, you shoucl participate in extracurricular activities. They look good on applications and they keep you busy so you dont fall in with a crowd of drug addict losers.
What is the best introductory book for someone who wants to learn ancient Greek?
If I have to name one source, it is the JACT Reading Greek course: Reading Greek: Text and Vocabulary. This volume is part of a three-book set, which includes:1. RG: Grammar and Exercises2. RG: Text and Vocabulary3. RG: An Independent Study GuideThey are worth the expense. The emphasis on continuous reading from the beginning allows the student to learn inductively, and the Grammar and Study Guide provide the necessary deductive aids and reference.Caveat lector autem … If the leaner is willing to make one extra purchase, I know a way to make JACT a bit more user-friendly in the beginner. As the delightful Greg Kane (POCM How to Learn to read Ancient Greek) observed, JACT is perhaps best for the person who has a little Greek already, or at least a good bit of Latin. I followed his advice and prospered through an introduction via Learn New Testament Greek: John H. Dobson. Dobson hit a home run because he used intelligent repetition to drill the forms into the reader so they become second nature. If you don’t care about the New Testament, it doesn’t matter, the Koine material and the superior method make this book a good bridge to the JACT Attic/Homeric Greek.Both JACT and Dobson have audio available. The JACT is actually amusing for its use of British Cockney accent. Rather like Monty Python meets Plato.One more trick for the beginner if you learn well from spoken language. I know of no audio vocabulary drills for Ancient Greek, but I have the New Testament Greek Vocabulary: Learn on the Go audio to help me absorb words while stuck in traffic. The great majority of the words have served me just fine in my Attic Greek reading.ἴθι εὐτυχής!