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| TEEN-AGERS: DEVELOP LANGUAGE SKILLS, VERBAL AND WRITTEN |
| Books & Magazines : Magazines |
| 03/15/06 |
Your kids are mad for "Catcher in the Rye." They may even occasionally read a classic such as “Pride and Prejudice” or "Moby Dick" or fall under the spell of Lady Macbeth. But, sadly, they more often than not fill up on "Teen Vogue," text messages, or iPods, and pepper every other sentence with such mots justes as “like, “dude,” “sweet,” and other such banal expressions at least a thousand times a day that you think, “what can I do to help my child from falling dangerously below illiterate?” Well, you have come to the right place! I also have experience teaching the new and ever-delightful SAT.
We are all judged by our command of English as well as the words we use. How well your children speak and write may mean the difference between soaring in the classroom and future professional lives and languishing forlornly at the margins.
Your kids will learn to:
Always strive for a kind of exactness in language—precise, muscular, sensible, transparent as water. Achieve a mastery of syntax, logic, consistency, and sequence, while avoiding misuse, ambiguity, and awkwardness. Learn vocabulary that dazzles and is always properly used. Cultivate a stirring, zestful, and highly literate approach to style, from speaking casually to making classroom presentations to imaginative essays. A well-written essay often means the difference between teen-agers getting into the college of their choice or not. Like an actor learning lines, they will grasp the nuances and essential rules of usage and grammar with practice.
Possessing a grasp of adjectives and adverbs, restrictive and non-restrictive phrases and clauses (that and which), conjunctions, modifiers that dare not dangle, singular subjects with singular verbs, common usage errors—because, due to, imply and infer, irregardless, lie and lay— depends upon an intimate knowledge of grammar.
I’m a professional writer and graduate of English Literature from New York University. I’ve been a feature writer and senior editor at several award-winning magazines and was an associate producer at Connecticut Public Radio. A Los Angeles film company recently optioned an article of mine.
I relish teaching language skills to children and adults, and, as Donald Barthelme writes, “Words have halos, patinas, overhangs, echoes.”
* Reasonable rates
* Excellent References
Robin Dorman
415-331-8659
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