My Writing Classes · 3:35am Dec 10th, 2016
A lot of people claimed I failed my English classes based on my fiction and grammar...
No, I didn't fail them, I wouldn't have graduated High School if I HAD failed them (Where I went to school it was one of the THREE major courses MUST-PASS required to graduate.)
The things is, my ENGLISH/LITERATURE classes were not the way you'd want them to be.
We were told to write journal entries about our typical days, or things we liked or do.
We were told to pick Novels and read as much as we could within the time, and then make summarized logs of what happened in each chapter.
I wasn't fond of reading, so I picked EASY novels like Harry Potter, since I had already seen some of the films which made it easier for me to make my logs and read the books
We also were taught BASIC things like Synonyms, Antonyms, Homonyms... oh and as for marks and symbols, well they didn't show us all of them. in fact... this symoble / the and/or dash... that was the most complicated one we ever saw.
We were only shown the period, the question mark, the exclamation, comma, apostrophe, quotation, ampersand... and the last one was the and/or dash
That's all we were taught from them, all other marks and symbols... nadda. Never shown, though they were seen in our books, we weren't exactly TAUGHT on those.
Oh, and another thing... that's all we were quizzed on them about "What they mean" We were never actually tested by writing stories on them.
We also were never taught of Character Development (That phrase was non-existent to me then. Never heard of it back then. Just like I was also never taught of sexism or racism, or even prejudice. I never heard of em... no one ever told me or showed me)
Nope, just background, plot and setting... not development.
Oh, and here's something that'll REALLY bite you, and make you cringe... so hold on to you hats. I'll say it slowly...
...We... we're... never... actually... graded... on... our... grammar... or... punctuation.
Yep... it's true. We were graded solely on how much work we did, passing our tests, and conductivity in class. the grammar and punctuation seemed to have very little to do with it.
(I know this because a lot of my journal entries, I doubt they were very well put in grammar, yet I got no less than 8/10 on them.
The point I'm making is, although ENGLISH/LITERATURE was not one of my strong subjects... I didn't fail. (again, if I HAD failed I would never have graduated in 2005)
As for things like grammar and punctuation, I learn by using subtitles on TV shows or DVDs, and I also let my spell checker handle most of the obvious errors.
Bottom line is...
...You can't fail what you were NEVER actually and effectively taught to begin with.
I write my own way (Just that) and I got my own way of doing it, just like everyone else (Or supposedly everyone else)
