8th Grade Language Arts - Back to School Theme

Sups 0:01

your default state is that we are smarter than eighth graders, which I really like.

Andi 0:05

Yeah. we'll see if my hypothesis is correct.

Tanner 0:10

that's great. Oh, That's not great. That makes me sweat.

Andi 0:13

well,

Sups 0:15

Yeah. I'm a good teacher. Yeah. Yeah.

Tanner 0:19

I think I'm gonna go with whatever one you don't go with.

Sups 0:25

Wow. Took me right back to eighth grade. Hello

Andi 0:30

and welcome to the, I should have known podcast, the trivia podcast that can't be trusted each week. Our quiz master presents you with four big facts on a topic, but one of those facts is a lie. And we are back to school here at the, I should known podcast this month And I'm your quiz master this week. I'm Andy and I'm going to be doing eighth grade language arts for my topic, and we have a special format for this month. So each fact will actually be phrased like a test question. You would see on a test and you'll be given four options, B, C or D. And I will tell you the correct.

Tanner 1:04

answer

Andi 1:05

But for one of the questions I will tell you the wrong answer is correct. So join our other hosts, soups and Tanner in figuring out which one of my answers is a lie. Mm-hmm

Tanner 1:17

eighth grade language arts, it just instantly took me back to middle school. And I was like, oh my God, I'm in that room again. Tanner

Andi 1:24

and I met in eighth grade language

Tanner 1:25

Yeah. What honors language arts. Seventh grade.

Andi 1:27

seventh grade honors

Sups 1:29

language. Oh,

Tanner 1:29

I was kind the class clown in that class. Oh

Andi 1:32

he was, yeah. Part of language arts is learning vocabulary. Right. And one of the vocabulary words we learned in class was cacophony

Tanner 1:40

mm-hmm mm-hmm

Andi 1:40

And that was Tanner's nickname

Tanner 1:42

Yep.

Andi 1:42

Yeah.

Sups 1:45

I love because it's very interesting because the moment when you said language arts. Yeah. I thought you'd talk about that. You were learning specific language or something, but in this case, language arts was, you were just referring to English,

Andi 1:58

Yeah. So this is a interesting thing to start with so I'm using Wisconsin standards and Tanner and I grew up in Wisconsin. Yeah. And in Wisconsin, it's called language arts or more specifically English language arts. Okay. But. but I think the reason they use language arts is because many of the skills you learn are actually skills that any child being educated in their native language should learn. Right. They're universal.

Sups 2:22

Mm-hmm okay.

Tanner 2:23

Right. There are similes and stuff in every language.

Andi 2:25

Right. Right. Exactly.

Sups 2:26

very interesting for me because when we had English classes, we had two types of English classes. So one, you had the pros and the poetry, right? When you're reading different stories, poems and everything

Andi 2:37

We usually call that

Sups 2:38

English lit and the other part was strictly grammar and handwriting. So where you practice cursive and writing and actually learn the grammar. right? Okay. Yeah.

Andi 2:47

that's basically how language arts is broken down and how my questions are broken

Tanner 2:52

Ah,

Andi 2:53

So these are eighth grade standards. in the us eighth grade is when you are 13 and turn 14, right? where we grew up, it was middle

Tanner 3:01

school. Mm-hmm right so eighth grade should be kind of on the easier side than S a

Sups 3:05

T Ah, yeah.

Andi 3:07

I, I

Sups 3:08

hope we'll find

Andi 3:08

So what I did though, is I took concepts from the curriculum But I made 'em a little harder

Sups 3:13

for you guys. All right. So your default state is that we are smarter than eighth graders, which I really like.

Andi 3:19

Yeah. we'll see if my hypothesis is correct.

Sups 3:22

Yeah. Okay.

Andi 3:23

So low hanging fruit.

Tanner 3:25

Mm-hmm

Andi 3:26

What is the subject of the sentence? Long-legged turtles. Love pizza.

Tanner 3:32

It's a great

Sups 3:33

sentence.

Andi 3:34

I love that sentence.

Tanner 3:36

it's the turtles

Sups 3:37

Yeah

Andi 3:37

So it's turtles mm-hmm or depending on your syntactic philosophy, the noun phrase that consists of the adjective and the noun is the subject long-legged turtles. And then long-legged is an example of what stylistic device, Where you start two words with the same sound.

Sups 3:55

same

Tanner 3:55

Oh, that's alliteration. Yeah.

Andi 3:57

it's not a literary device. It's the stylistic

Tanner 3:59

device. right? Ooh.

Andi 4:00

So both of those questions are to illustrate, again, these two aspects of English, where we have the language and the grammar, but also style writing logic, reasoning, comprehension, all these kinds of things. So those are two different elements of language arts. And. to me because I am an English teacher.

Tanner 4:17

Right, right.

Andi 4:19

actually, am I literally have my mug that says that I'm a proud

Sups 4:23

teacher.

Andi 4:24

but I only teach English language and only two speakers of other languages. So non-native English speakers. So I'm not qualified to teach eighth grade language arts,

Tanner 4:36

So you don't cover Shakespeare in the rhyme of the ancient Mariner with your students?

Andi 4:39

no so part of language arts is to make you a native speaker of the language that you're being educated in. Mm-hmm

Tanner 4:45

That's an interesting way to

Andi 4:47

think about it. Yeah. Cool. So let's start with question number one. So just to reiterate, I'm going to read you four questions and for each of them I will give you four options. And then I will tell you the correct answer, but for one of the questions I'm lying about the correct answer. right? So question number one. What is the best form of the verb bid in the following sentence before she left? Mrs. Smith was blank farewell by her family. fill in the blank with the best form of the verb bid. So your options are a bid B bidden. C BA or DBID. the correct answer is B bidden.

Tanner 5:31

biddenden

Andi 5:32

That's

Sups 5:32

what I wasn't bid like Babi bid. Do you remember the three forms of bid? I just, it wasn't wasn't

Tanner 5:38

this is a hard one. bid has gotta be a

Sups 5:39

weird

Tanner 5:40

verb because this is not my prototypical usage of it. I thought she was gonna say we're at an auction and they're bidding, but it's bid farewell. Yes.

Sups 5:48

so it's bid bid bid,

Tanner 5:49

I guess.

Andi 5:50

Is

Sups 5:50

Is it? I, I don't, I always thought it's bid bid.

Tanner 5:52

bit,

Andi 5:53

Yeah. So for any listeners who maybe don't know what SOS is talking about is often how students learning English, Study verbs. Yeah. So they learn the infinitive. Yeah. And then they learn the past tense and then they learn the past partisan, which you use in the perfect mm-hmm They learn them like together like this. So you would learn like, cut, cut, Cut. or eat eight eaten

Tanner 6:14

Yeah, exactly.

Andi 6:15

this. is how students who learn English, not as their native language, usually practice their verbs. Yeah. So I did pick a difficult

Sups 6:23

para.

Tanner 6:23

on purpose. Yeah.

Andi 6:24

Yeah. This is probably harder than what an eighth grader would get, but I feel confident that. Some eighth graders

Sups 6:30

would get this one.

Andi 6:31

Okay. Maybe the, maybe the top 10% but I think

Sups 6:35

they would. Okay. So what were the options

Andi 6:37

again? A bid B bidden.

Tanner 6:40

C

Andi 6:41

CBA

Sups 6:42

Did. Okay.

Tanner 6:43

This is also interesting because it's the standards someone is

Andi 6:47

saying, so I, I would like to point out. So this is from, standards L 0.8 0.1. conventions of standard English okay. And this is particularly on the section about active and passive

Tanner 7:00

voice. Oh.

Andi 7:00

Oh.

Sups 7:01

mm.

Tanner 7:01

Cause the bidden would be used in the passive. passive. yeah, She was bidden. Yeah. So that's what we're talking about here. Or

Sups 7:09

she was bid

Andi 7:11

well

Sups 7:11

And this is the only question one of four, right. So wow.

Andi 7:14

Yeah, remember where these standards come from, maybe that's a big hint,

Tanner 7:18

yeah, especially with English, a lot of people like

Sups 7:20

to

Tanner 7:21

enforce rules. Right. Whereas. The way I learned linguistics is you can describe the language, but you shouldn't enforce

Andi 7:27

the rules.

Sups 7:28

Yeah.

Tanner 7:28

But in middle school, they have to teach

Andi 7:30

you, the rules. I think that's the more advanced you get in linguistics, the more you realize

Sups 7:36

that there

Tanner 7:36

are

Andi 7:36

no rules Yeah.

Tanner 7:37

Yeah.

Sups 7:38

as

Tanner 7:38

long as it makes sense. Yeah. Right. Yeah. If everyone started

Sups 7:41

saying BAE

Tanner 7:42

and, and that's the right

Andi 7:43

that's then that becomes the right answer. Exactly. So that is something to keep in mind. These are standard English. Mm-hmm and we are talking

Tanner 7:50

about this. Yeah. Okay.

Sups 7:51

even though I never in

Tanner 7:53

Wisconsin,

Sups 7:54

just,

Andi 7:55

we speak Wisconsin,

Sups 7:56

yeah, Okay. tough. Okay.

Andi 7:57

So question number two, Identify the mood then decide if it is correctly used in following sentence, the doctor advised against her better judgment that he tries a mixture of two medications.

Sups 8:10

Cool.

Andi 8:11

So identify the mood and then say whether it is correct or incorrect. a, Imperative and. it's correct B subjunctive and it's incorrect C indicative and it's correct. D indicative and it's incorrect.

Sups 8:28

And

Andi 8:28

the right answer is D it is incorrect in the indicative

Sups 8:32

Oh, goodness. Ooh. No, that's not what I was thinking. No, no,

Andi 8:37

uh, oh,

Tanner 8:39

were you thinking? my well, my first red flag is when you talk about mood, I'm like grumpy, sad, happy, but mood and language. Okay. So I learned mood when I started learning foreign languages, you know, so I don't remember learning mood for English.

Andi 8:54

Yeah,

Tanner 8:54

we didn't.

Sups 8:55

I'm thinking whether moods that I've learned in foreign language is the same

Tanner 8:59

that applies

Andi 8:59

English. Yeah. They should

Tanner 9:00

be okay. Yeah.

Andi 9:02

Yeah, so the standards have changed since Tanner and I were in eighth grade So L eight one C form and use verbs in the indicative imperative, interrogative, conditional and subjunctive moods. Those are the moods. Those are

Sups 9:15

are your moods.

Andi 9:16

We're gonna get moody. Yeah. Ooh, I like that.

Sups 9:18

So it's definitely not conditional and I'm glad it

Tanner 9:20

was not emotion. Yeah. It's definitely

Andi 9:22

not. Yeah.

Tanner 9:23

So imperative is giving orders, right?

Sups 9:26

So

Andi 9:27

Subjunctive was one of the options. Yes. This is,

Tanner 9:30

there is doubt, I think Yes.

Andi 9:33

yeah. Expressing wishes, doubt,

Tanner 9:35

Mm-hmm exhalations. Yeah.

Andi 9:38

Yes. Things like

Tanner 9:39

Yeah. And then. What were the other ones? interrogative Interrogative

Sups 9:42

This is definitely not.

Andi 9:44

So this sentence was the doctor advised against her better judgment that he tries a mixture of two medications. Okay.

Tanner 9:52

I think I see the issue here. I think it's with the verb tries. I would say the doctor advised against her better judgment that he try.

Sups 10:02

blah. blah.

Tanner 10:03

I remember the

Andi 10:04

the rest of the sentence. Yeah. The rest of the sentence is two medications, Tanner,

Tanner 10:07

two medications.

Andi 10:08

doctor

Tanner 10:09

you know,

Sups 10:10

I was looking at the word advice. Okay. Rather than it tries mm-hmm so, which immediately rules out option a, which is imperative, because imperative is like giving orders. Right. Right. And in this case, the doctor's advising. Yeah. So option a is definitely gone And the correct answer you said

Andi 10:26

was option D incorrect

Tanner 10:28

indicative. yeah.

Sups 10:29

So, which is why I think like option D now that when we analyze each of the options. Yeah. I

Tanner 10:34

think indicative. you think that's the

Andi 10:36

right mood? Yeah. Yeah. So most sentences in English are in the indicative. Yeah, because that's just normal talking. Yeah. we

Sups 10:43

we talking like this? Like, no

Andi 10:45

that's in derogative.

Tanner 10:49

if we were talking like

Sups 10:51

that, No, that. no. no Conditional

Andi 10:54

that's

Tanner 10:54

conditional. Oh, Okay. Well let's start

Andi 10:56

talking oh, No, that's imperative again, Oh, you guys are so good at this. So this is kind of funny to me a little bit, like as an English language teacher to non-native speakers, I feel fairly confident that many of my

Sups 11:10

students

Andi 11:10

get this question, right. Wow. Really? Yeah.

Tanner 11:12

That's great. Oh, That's not great. That makes me sweat.

Andi 11:15

well,

Sups 11:16

no, it's great

Tanner 11:17

great

Andi 11:17

her. but it's because when you aren't a native speaker, the way you learn the language is different from how native speakers do. So the thing is all of these moods, if you are a native speaker of English, you probably use them all correctly. Right. And never once think about them. Right. But when you're learning English from scratch, not from birth and you have to study it. Then you're usually taught them using these phrases and You learn this explicitly and you practice just this mood So this subjunctive cuz that's the weird one, can you guys make a subjunctive sentence?

Sups 11:48

I should have known, could be a

Tanner 11:50

Oh,

Andi 11:53

it could be considered. Actually there's evidence that this mood is kind of grammatically on the way out that many young people no longer

Tanner 11:59

use it anyway. Yeah. Okay. Well

Sups 12:02

I don't We've got two more questions. We're

Tanner 12:04

halfway through Ah, man.

Andi 12:06

All right. So question three is kind of the overlap where we start to move away from language acquisition, explicitly like grammar and language and into more about style and literature. So question number three Consider the following analogy mutiny is to rebel as audacious is to blank. a insulin, B IPEL C persuasive or D despondent.

Sups 12:36

Oh,

Tanner 12:36

Whoa

Sups 12:37

and the correct answer is just so that it matches

Andi 12:39

with what I'm thinking. It's the correct answer is a insulin.

Tanner 12:43

Hmm.

Andi 12:44

mm-hmm

Tanner 12:45

I like analogies usually, but this one is giving me some

Sups 12:49

trouble. I mean,

Tanner 12:50

I know the meaning of all those words but looking at the similarity between the first pairs and then applying that same

Andi 12:56

similarity to the second Exactly. So at its part of L eight five B. Use the relationship between particular words to better understand each of the words in

Sups 13:05

analogy. Yeah. muttin is to rebel and audacious is to

Tanner 13:11

insulin insulin

Sups 13:13

I think I feel fairly confident with option a because it's definitely not D

Tanner 13:17

yeah.

Sups 13:17

respondent. yeah. It's

Andi 13:18

definitely not that So I did take every single word in this whole thing from a list of eighth grade vocabulary

Tanner 13:25

Mm-hmm words Yeah. So mutiny and rebel they're similar. Meaning mm-hmm same part of speech. Yeah. Now we need a word with similar meaning to audacious with the same part of speech. Mm-hmm I think is the prompt

Sups 13:37

here.

Tanner 13:37

So insulin. Yeah Yeah

Sups 13:39

it's definitely not persuasive. Yeah, because audacious and persuasive are too different thing. Right They don't. Yes. Because audacious is like, you know, I dunno, but I can just say how

Tanner 13:50

Right.

Sups 13:51

exactly.

Andi 13:52

exactly.

Sups 13:53

it's not IPEL and it's not despondent because despondent kind of

Tanner 13:57

means something different,

Sups 13:58

Right,

Andi 13:58

Yeah. Hmm. All right. One more question. Okay. Okay. And this one is really talking about literature and reading comprehension. So question four, the following sentence does not include an example of which literary device. the storm quiet as a lullaby, sang me to sleep all through the night.

Tanner 14:21

a

Andi 14:21

irony B. Similarly C personification D hyperbole. The correct answer is D hyperbole.

Tanner 14:33

That

Sups 14:34

right. That sounds

Tanner 14:36

right. I think, yeah. I was trying to identify them as she was saying the

Sups 14:39

sentence. Yeah. Yeah.

Tanner 14:40

let's break it down. Okay. So I think as, quite as a lullaby yeah. Means it's a Simi Simi.

Sups 14:46

Yeah. Right. Storm quite as a lullaby in

Tanner 14:49

a way mm-hmm

Sups 14:51

Okay. And

Tanner 14:52

then there was personification. So it's saying

Sups 14:55

and to sleep. Yeah and hyperbole is like, when you have like some crazy

Tanner 14:59

Over the top, over the

Sups 15:00

the top. Yeah. I think it's

Andi 15:03

So the correct answer is hyperbole. It's not an example, hyperbole and a sentence. Like this would be something like the storm blew

Sups 15:09

the roof off of my house. Right. something crazy happened. So

Tanner 15:12

I think, yeah. So

Andi 15:14

this is from standard 8.3 R 0.4, because it refers to

Sups 15:19

reading.

Andi 15:20

students will evaluate literary devices to support interpretations of literary texts. literary devices are these kinds of devices that writers and speakers can use in order to create meaning beyond the literal. Yeah. Right. So examples that eighth graders are supposed to know are Simi metaphor, imagery, irony, Onia. Personification and hyperly

Tanner 15:43

Mm-hmm Okay. But you know what the problem is? I think

Sups 15:47

I agreed with

Tanner 15:48

four of those.

Sups 15:49

Yeah. Yeah. Well before we guess, which one this incorrect, do you mind repeating the questions? The options

Tanner 15:57

and the

Andi 15:58

correct answers. Yes. All Right

Tanner 16:10

Listen, carefully

Andi 16:11

students.

Tanner 16:12

Question one.

Andi 16:13

What is the best form of the verb bid in the following sentence before she left? Mrs. Smith was blank farewell by her family, a bid B bidden CBA. DBID. The correct answer is BBI question two, Identify the mood then decide if it is correctly used in the following sentence, the doctor advised against her better judgment that he tries a mixture of two, a. Imperative and. it's correct B subjunctive and it's incorrect C indicative and it's correct. Or D indicative and it's incorrect. The correct answer is D indicative incorrect question three. Consider the following analogy. Mutiny is to rebel as audacious is to blank. A insulin B IPEL C persuasive D despondent. The correct answer is a insulin. And question four, the following sentence does not include an example of which literary device, the storm quiet as a lullaby sang me to sleep all through the night. A irony B similarly, C personification or D hyperbole. The correct answer is D hyperbole. One of those is alive.

Sups 17:47

Okay. Yeah. So I think four, we can just ignore. Yeah.

Tanner 17:50

I think we figured that one

Sups 17:51

relatively confident. Yeah. Three.

Tanner 17:54

Pretty confident pretty confident. Yeah. I think it's

Sups 17:57

two, one and two. And I have a feeling it's number two, because I'm thinking it's option C. Correct? I indicative because the doctor advised, because now I'm trying to think back the sentence. She was forbidden good by, by her family. yeah, because she was bid goodbye. She was baed I think there was some rule, right? You can't use two past tense word together next to each other, something

Tanner 18:19

like that, right in English. If it's yeah. If it's like passive like this, she was something. Yeah. You have to use the. The Al like you were doing the, the eend form. Yeah. So the question is, is bid. The right. Or is it just bid? Cause I don't think it's BA

Sups 18:35

so I

Tanner 18:35

think it's bid, bid

Sups 18:37

Okay.

Tanner 18:37

That's what I'm thinking

Sups 18:39

So you think that's right? Yeah

Tanner 18:40

So number two, She said it's indicative incorrect. You think it's indicative, indicative, correct? Yeah. Okay. See, I was thinking

Sups 18:47

that subjunctive is coming

Tanner 18:48

back to haunt me. I don't know if it's maybe subjunctive. Yeah. But I'm also on the bid bid in thing, because

Sups 18:55

I know

Tanner 18:55

in my speech I overuse the E form. Right. The part. So if other words like bot mm-hmm, brought I want

Sups 19:04

to say Botten mm-hmm

Tanner 19:05

that's not the right, so it's not right. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking, oh no. Am I applying that to bid bid? And I want it to be bid in. Yeah. Oh,

Sups 19:14

so that's be worried. So then what would be,

Tanner 19:16

she was

Sups 19:17

bed. Goodbye. bed. Goodbye. Yeah. Okay. That also kind of makes sense. I mean, the moment she said the sentence and I was like, it's bed,

Tanner 19:23

bit, but now I'm

Sups 19:24

trying. Oh man, it's definitely between one and

Tanner 19:27

two. I

Sups 19:28

Ooh,

Tanner 19:29

I don't know

Andi 19:32

okay. We

Sups 19:33

gotta pick one. Yeah.

Tanner 19:34

I think I'm gonna go with whatever one you don't go with.

Andi 19:38

Wow. That's a test taking

Sups 19:40

Okay. So in that case, I kind of believe it's number one. Yeah. But. I

Tanner 19:45

can go with number two. Okay. Okay.

Sups 19:46

One with number one. Okay.

Andi 19:48

Okay. I was lying about the correct answer in

Tanner 19:52

question

Sups 19:53

in two.

Tanner 19:53

Okay

Andi 19:54

But you did not

Tanner 19:55

pick the correct answer. Ah,

Andi 19:57

No. Tanner was almost there. The correct answer is B it is subjunctive and incorrect, which I kind of thought you could puzzle through. If you identified it's incorrect. If it

Tanner 20:07

it were

Sups 20:07

indicative.

Andi 20:08

why would it be

Sups 20:09

incorrect

Tanner 20:09

to say he

Sups 20:09

tries?

Andi 20:10

Right. what's weird about it. It's in the subjunctive form. So

Sups 20:14

you have to say he

Tanner 20:15

tried, cutting. Oh, okay. So if you boil it down to just, he tried, that sounds wrong. Yeah. So that should have clue us in that.

Andi 20:22

Why is that right? It's sub that's actually a trick I teach my students. because I put it in the

Sups 20:26

kind of

Andi 20:27

aside. Yeah, yeah. To separate the part of the sentence that makes it subdued, which is the main verb advised like soup said. Yeah. From the verb that actually gets modified. So I separated them, but I tell my students all the time to do that, like look at the verbs,

Sups 20:40

Yeah. I got fixated on advice and that's why I was thinking indicat, but okay. But you know what, and I should have known, you have to guess, which

Tanner 20:46

is the correct. doesn't matter

Sups 20:48

the

Andi 20:48

That's true. You, you got it. You did get it right? Yes. Yes. And with the, bit and bit thing. Yeah. pretty much every standard I could find it's bid

Tanner 20:56

bay.

Sups 20:56

bid

Andi 20:57

Oh, it is. But I would be willing to believe that in London, English it's Bibi bit. Yeah, because they do this with many other verbs, like get got, got, which in American English is always

Tanner 21:08

get got gotten. Yeah.

Andi 21:10

and I thought the way you could test this one is forbid is a much more common word and it's forbid forbid forbidden. And that one's Definitely forbidden forbidden take the four

Tanner 21:20

often. it's still forbid.

Sups 21:21

Yeah. That's a good trick. Yeah. Forbidden. Yeah. I'm a good teacher. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I knew about something was off about bid amazing. Wow. Took me right back to eighth grade.

Tanner 21:33

it was fantastic Yeah Wow.

Andi 21:35

known should Thanks for listening to this episode of the aha room podcast. We are going to continue to go back to school for the rest of the month and as always,

Tanner 21:46

thanks

Andi 21:46

listening.

Sups 21:48

take it

Tanner 21:49

day. Oh man.

Sups 21:51

Oh,