Robins or pinguins?

"Is it a robin or a pinguin?"; we are asked all the time by the teacher.

Let me explain:
A robin ( a typical blac bird, which you can call a typical bird because it flies and lais eggs in a nest) is a item in grammar which follows the "rules" and acts like "normal"
A pinguin (not the kind of bird you would normally think of and it can't fly) on the other hand is a grammar item that doesn't act like "normal".
So when you have a sentense or item  that follows the "normal" pattern, you also have a robin.
Do you have a sentense or item that doen't follow the "normal" pattern, you have a pinguin!

Today we had your third workshop, where we worked on "Clause structure, complements and adjuncts". Friday after we had had a lecture about these terms I sat for a few hours working on the exercises with two others. This was very beneficial because we had time to think out loud and discuss the exercises. On the other hand, when I sat alone in the weekend, I the exercises felf much harder.
Todays workshop was different from the others we have had. First we got one hours to do the exercises for one chapter, and then we talked about some of them.
Actually we ended up analyzing a lot of sentences on the board, with the teacher as our guide, and the students as pupils thinking out loud. In the group I sat in, we agreed that todays workshop was better than the privious ones.
All the schaffolding the teacher did with us today has to do with the feedback we gave her last week; she asked for one thing that was good about the course, and one thing we thought could be improved. It sounded like people understod more today, which was also my impression.