Friday, September 21, 2012

Mark Twain and Misconceptions


Today it is the classic Mark Twain story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" that is causing me to start going on and on again. I like it if you leaf through my annotated texts (not that i had to for this one) and see the notations I made regarding common misconceptions to correct before having them read. In the story, a man fills a frog with quail shot so it can't jump and that's
t the way he wins the bet. My students pretty consistently thought quail shot was an alcoholic beverage ( proving I am teaching not in the South but the Northeast) and that the frog was too drunk to jump. When the man dumped the shot out at the end, they thought the frog thew up. Annotation: explain quail shot is like buck shot or sort of like bbs, not a drink, frog not drunk.

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