Thursday, May 3, 2012

My older son brought home a paper corrected by his teacher, slightly indignant. She'd corrected a few things, and he felt she was wrong. I went over the paper with him, and had to agree. He'd written, The South was largely agricultural and depended on others for manufactured goods, so they opposed tarrifs that made prices of manufactured goods increase. She corrected this sentence to, The South was largely agricultural and they depended on other's for manufactured goods, so they opposed tarrifs that made prices of manufactured goods to increase. So she added an an incorrect apostrophe, an incorrect "to," and a "they" that made the sentence read awkwardly, but left the incorrect spelling of "tariff" alone. It just goes to show that teachers can make mistakes, too. I pointed the misspelling out to my son and said mildly that lots of people had trouble with apostrophes, even teachers. I'm glad he got it right, though!                                                                                                          

3 comments:

  1. I had something like this happen to my son a few months ago. The teacher sent a letter home saying "Xander don't finish work because he says he don't understand. Please talk to him.

    So, I sent it back to her marked up with red ink!
    I never heard back from that teacher. lol

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  2. OH dear. Head hurts. For both of you!

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  3. I figure it's easy to make silly mistakes when you're grading thirty papers, so I didn't make a big deal out of it to my kid. But I admit the apostrophe did make me cringe:-).

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