A Teaching Update, With a Guest Appearance By the Passive Voice

After an especially exhausting day, I almost made it out the door of the AH before 9:00. Then I decided to go back and check one last thing on the computer. Once I got this far, I started to blog. Dang.

So, I just realized that if you didn't know any better you would think that we didn't actually teach around here. Believe it or not, we do. In fact, final exams are coming up in two weeks and I am excited to see how they go. I have a couple of classes who will do just fine and a couple of students I can honestly say have a better chance of flying to the moon than they have of passing the final on the first try.

The last several weeks have been spent, it seems, on the same topic: conditionals. You know, those sentences that begin with "if" and don't give you any trouble because you are a native speaker. By some strange coincidence, I am teaching these to both my third and fifth level classes at the same time (at slightly different levels.) If I hear one more sentence that begins with "If it rains tomorrow," I think I will scream!

So in the end, we've had some fun with this conversation:
Me: Complete this sentence, "If I had a million dollars,..."
Them: "But Aaron, it's not real!"
Me, under my breath: I know its not real, that's why its called an "UNREAL CONDITIONAL."

This week, third level AI, starring the passive voice.

"The tennis ball was thrown by Aaron."