"Let's eat Grandma!" vs "Let's eat, Grandma!" : Grammar saves lives.

Being a finalist I have LOADS of work to do this Christmas, gone are the days of second year where I would wait until a week before the deadline before even picking an essay question, with utterences of YOLO serving as a justification. No, this year i'm being very grown up and getting my work done, although I don't really have much choice, 15000 words to write and 20 books to read doesn't really give me much time to procrastinate!

Just one of the twenty books to read!!

You'd have thought that me being a final year literature student essay writing would be a doddle by now? Well it is certainly easier than it was, although expectations have also risen. Believe it or not, my biggest problem is grammar and punctuation! Feedback on one of my essays in second year said "Unable to award a higher class due to poor use of English" "You need to sort out your problem with apostrophes" ... awkward. Well since then I have been working hard on my English grammar - my time in Germany teaching it to other people certainly helped, explaining grammar points that I had never seriously considered before helped to clarify them in my own mind, and now, as I sit here monotonously typing day after day I am certainly much more aware of my use of commas, colons and apostrophes.

As part of the 'becoming a teacher' process we have to pass standard numeracy and literacy tests, grammar and punctuation being key topics - I passed these tests a few months ago, no problems at all, so it can't be all that bad? Can it?

I have been recommended a good book on grammar called 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss, so will give that a good read, and hopefully by the time I am stood at the front of the classroom next year I will be the comma queen :) Until fairly recently, my major concern has been memorising German grammar tables, adjective endings and conjugations of verbs; it seems I have somewhat neglected my English! Time to change that!


"It's easy to remember when to use an apostrophe; its use is relatively straight forward."

Right. Back to the essay writing.