Sometimes, you don’t want to appear to be anything less than perfect. That one student in the back can spot the tiny coffee stain on your shirt from 20 feet away, and there’s the other one who has a natural ability to point out when you’re using poor grammar. Kids these days!
Here at The Mailbox, just about every page that’s ever written for one of our books or magazines ends up passing in front of about 12 pairs of eyes. All those eyes belong to people who are paid to eliminate errors. But Intermediate Mailbox editor Sherry McGregor and I are here to admit an error that still managed to slip by all those fantastic eyeballs.
Check out Brain Booster #6 on page 19 of the August/September 2013 issue of The Mailbox Intermediate magazine. Can you spot the error?
Figure out what is unusual about the paragraph below. Then try to explain what is unusual in the same manner.
Can you find what is off about this paragraph? If you study it, you may catch on. You could look at thousands of paragraphs in thousands of books and not find any that contain this oddity. Do you know what it is? Scan the paragraph; skim it. Try hard, and you will find its unusual quality.
The problem is, we removed the error in the paragraph. You’ll never discover that the paragraph does not contain a single letter e because, by mistake, we changed “Scan this paragraph” to “Scan the paragraph,” thereby leaving an e in it.
So there you have it. We are not perfect. But we admit our mistakes. As a teacher, you likely do the same thing on (hopefully rare) occasions. What is the worst or most embarrassing mistake you’ve ever admitted to your class?
P.S. To get a corrected version of Brain Boosters online, make sure you’re signed in to themailbox.com to get your Companion Extras and click here.