Junkyard Quote 1 - Week 1

"I got mines, Ms. L_______." 

A female student in my literature class did not understand she was using "mines" incorrectly. As I began explaining why "mines" was inappropriately used in her sentence, it quickly became a class discussion. I wrote the word with its varied forms for them on the white board:

Term she was using:

mine = possessive pronoun used as an adjective in the predicate. (Example: That book is mine.) No "s" is added to the ending.

As a noun:

mine = a man-made shaft or open excavation site where raw materials are unearthed and removed.

mines = (plural form of mine) more than one man-made shaft or open excavation site where raw materials are unearthed and removed.


As a verb:
to mine = to unearth raw materials

And just to make sure there was no confusion, I wrote out the words "mind" and "minds". Many of my students have specific learning disabilities in written expression and reading comprehension, and could easily mistake the words.

By the end of the class, the student who initiated the discussion said, "That's cool, Ms. L______ but I keep saying 'mines' cuz it sounds right to me and mines."[Note: The grammar and spelling errors are intentional. They are my attempt to accurately depict her speech in class.]

All I could do was cringe inwardly and start reviewing the Latin and Greek root words we are studying for this week. Maybe by the end of the semester she'll think differently. Maybe.