During the last week of class, I was reviewing with my 10th grade class, in preparation for the finals. I asked a question, and a couple of the kids volunteered to answer, but I called on a kid in the first row, who did, in fact know the answer.
This did not, however satisfy the rest of the class. One kid in the back called out, “Come on, I rosed my hand first, why didn’t you call on me?”
I responded, “You raised your hand.”
“What’s the difference?”
Noticing what we in the business call a teachable moment (which is incidentally and ironically a really depressing term because we talk about them like we talk about the time we found a four-leaf clover) I decided to give him the full explanation.
“You know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is, right?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. Like you can run a race, or run the dishwasher, or you can just run…the last one is intransitive, it has no direct object. You can trip Brooks, over there, or you just can trip.”
“Okay.”
“So sometimes, verbs are only transitive. Sometimes, they’re never transitive. Often, in English anyway, you can use them either way. But usually the meaning changes slightly depending on whether the verb is used transitively or intransitively. So, if you say, ‘Timmy was walking down the hall when he just dropped,’ you mean a different action than when you say he dropped his books.”
“Okay, but I rosed my hand.” Why is that wrong?
“Well if we can keep distinctions between words, we can make our meaning clear. There are two different verbs here that you’re mixing. To rise means to get up of one’s own accord. It’s intransitive. A balloon rises, the sun rises. Yesterday they rose. Rose is the past tense of rise.
“But you ought to use the verb raise, which means to lift something else off the ground. The wind raises a kite, you raise your hand. A few minutes ago, you raised it. Raise is transitive. Something cannot raise itself.
“This is important because we need two separate verbs to keep these ideas distinct. For instance, Lazarus was raised from the dead. It happened, but it wasn’t his doing. On the other hand, Christ rose from the dead. This is an important distinction. It was (at least partially) due to his own nature that he came back to life. We use a transitive verb with Lazarus and an intransitive with Christ.”
At this point, I saw a kid in the front row shaking his head.
“What?”
“You should teach a class that’s like English and Bible together.”
“What do you think I’m doing here? Good grammar is good theology.”
“It’s funny, all my teachers here think alike. English, history, Bible…it’s like you all are talking to each other.”
“Wasn’t it that way at your old school? I’m sure they talked to each other so the classes overlapped some.”
“This is different. It’s like everyone here thinks about things the same way. The teachers treat everything like it all fits together.”
Great story, especially that last quote.
That’s fantastic. I laughed and clapped my hands at the student’s comment that, “You should teach a class that’s like English and Bible together.” I want to say, “You go to AACS, hon. What did you expect?”