Language Investigation #3 - 9/19/08

The kinds of reading and writing that I was asked to do in my primary schooling have to do with books such as Bridge to Terabithia and Om-Kas-Toe. They were fictional books that always embraced a meaning of unity, friendship, loyalty, family and other nauseatingly sappy themes. There was an emphasis on the happy, perfect life as society dictates it. Other readings were simplified history and science books that skipped over the gory and hard facts of death, destruction and disease. Everything was happily laid out in perfect-world criteria. The writing followed suit. We were asked to write short stories involving times when our parents helped us, who our hero was, what our favorite books and movies were. Light subjects that ten-year-old and unders should only have to face. You were to have these writings in a five paragraph format, where the first paragraph was an introduction and the last, a conclusion. The sentence structures were all very similar until about fourth and fifth grade. A boring monotony of he did/she did. Nearly every sentence began with “I” except for maybe every fifth sentence, because we were told that not every sentence should begin with”I.” I feel bad for the teachers forced to read and teach the same structure over and over with no variation. We were to focus on spelling, with one or two new vocabulary words a week. Everything simple, everything hinted with a taste of challenge.

Then secondary school hit. I’m not saying that I was unprepared for what secondary school might present me. I was extremely well prepared considering the people around me from other backgrounds. I could speak English. I could read it. I could write it. I could think it. The textbook levels jumped in difficulty, leaving many of my fellow students behind. I was fortunate enough to have a brain willing to adapt to the challenge and defeat it. The reading was not challenging for me, but it was for many of my friends who couldn’t fathom the explanation of a multitude of scientific process or exactly what was going on when it came to passing bills or just how the different mathematical formulas were supposed to work. The books turned from contemporary to classic. We needed to know the basics and our heritage in literature. I did as I was told in class. We learned how to mix up the sentence structure and every writing was expected to have a mix of structure. Essays began to inhabit the English curriculum and the idea of keeping “I” out of your papers. Writing turned from personal and fun to impersonal and monotonous. It seemed that every level of schooling had its own way of imposing academic boredom into every assignment. Vocabulary words were expected to be an own-initiative pastime and you were graded on the whether or not you could read your teachers’ mind and figure out these criteria. I used words I found in my reading to advance my vocabulary. I’m not sure how I managed to read my teachers’ mind, but it seemed to have worked rather well.

The teaching ways that I found useful, were the discussion based classes for English. It helped me to expand my one perspective to a multitude and create a proper thesis (yet another new skill learned) and figure out what the meaning was behind the text. The reason why the teacher used this technique was to expand our thought and our critical thinking by debating if another person’s view was valid or thoughtful. Through discussion, we could support or refute arguments and figure out why we did that. It helped our intrinsic motivation when we did well and helped us figure out how to think about texts when we were wrong. When it came to historical, scientific and mathematical texts, I found that almost all of the teachers focused on a lecture type classroom with a question and answer allowance. That worked the best because there are just so many facts to memorize. To put these skills into place requires a little less discussion (except maybe in talking about historical events and how and why they happened). It was a lot of memorizing facts and in the case of math, repeat, repeat, repeat.

These gave influenced my way of thinking. How do I look at a text? What is important from it? What should I respond to and how do I form my own opinion utilizing the text assigned. How do I personalize everything I read? Then, how do I purposefully portray it in a paper so that my teacher can see what I have learned and what I thought was important or even critical. It has made me skeptical of English teachers who do not do discussion-based classes and even more skeptical when they automatically assume that my opinion is wrong, because it is different. I have learned to find the importance in classes in which I thought they were originally useless. Every class has a meaning and purpose and can add to my thinking. My reading and writing history has not only influenced my reading and writing, but also my way of life. I think through theories and themes. My writing reflects this life philosophy.