Hello everyone. I never liked English class at all throughout High School because every class was more of a literature appreciation class than it was a class instructing students about writing skills or how to use language in general. I learned more about language mechanics and grammar from my Spanish classes than I did from any of my honors/AP English courses. However, because of this, I enjoyed when I got to write a paper and exercise my creative freedom, as it was a refreshing break from memorizing poems and discussing cryptic literature. I liked writing any kind of essay, but my favorites were shorter, reflective works with limited structure. It was a jarring transition from Junior to Senior year, because my Senior year AP literature teacher had incredibly high standards for papers, no matter how formal or informal the assignment was. I hadn't ever been exposed to such strict grading before, and I feel like it wasn't as productive as having a smooth transition from High School level writing to College level writing starting in Junior year. In short: I liked the assignments and the writing itself, but I didn't particularly like the classes or the grading.
I look forward to taking this class because the material we will cover includes some of the things that I always wanted to learn in my former English classes, but never got around to actually learning. I'm excited to work on writing effectively, as one of the main points I've had to work on throughout school is simply organizing my thoughts and communicating my main points more effectively.
I completely agree with you. I understand that old English literature is important but it should be kept to a minimum. English class should be mostly about grammar and writing. Also, I agree that with a super strict grading scale. It takes away the fun of writing your paper if you are too worried on the formatting or if you remembered to insert page numbers.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand this as well. Writing a paper in itself isn't so horrible, the difficult part comes with trying to be sure that the teacher likes your paper. That does take all the enjoyment and personality out of the paper which is unfortunate. I also think it is so frustrating that certain teachers grade certain ways and have different expectations. One teacher may love a paper, while another thinks it's absolutely terrible. It's so hard to transition between English classes in regard to writing and grading.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome and really relatable. It hard to please everybody when writing a paper, while trying to show your voice through your paper and have fun with it. The grading scale can be frustrating at times thats why its important we keep in mind what are teacher wants and needs to see in our papers.
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