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| Mouth-Off Main PageIt took me years to unlearn the crap I was taught in High School English, so if any students are reading this, let me un-brainwash you from your misguided High School English education.
Learn about creative writing by reading current pop novels. Shakespeare and Dickens were just pop soap opera stuff of their day.
The purpose of reading a novel is to get into and enjoy someone else’s imagination. It can also be interesting to discuss what the author’s imagination says about the world we live in or how their ideas affect us. To achieve this end, students should be reading Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon. These authors are easy, fun, and can stimulate interesting discussions about the world we live in.
Classic authors like Shakespeare and Dickens were pop writers long ago, but now they are difficult to enjoy and understand. Students are often lost and bored by ancient classics and are consequently turned off to reading. There is nothing inherently wrong with reading old novels, but High School students should begin with books they can enjoy and realistically understand before they move on to often incomprehensible classics.
Spelling, grammar, and writing structure are suggestions on how to communicate but are not absolute laws and do not need to be obeyed. The important thing is to express an interesting opinion clearly.
After reading books, students are often asked to write an essay about what they have read. Many students have a terrible time writing because they spend all of their time trying to follow the millions of grammar, spelling, and structure rules which our English teachers strictly enforce . I used to spend hours trying to write within the five paragraph structure. Then I spent even more time worrying about spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. I actually believed that writing was about following writing-rules. We were never taught that the purpose of writing is to clearly say something interesting.
There is no such thing as right or wrong. You should only be down-graded for saying nothing interesting or for writing something that is just hard to understand.
I rarely read any of the books my Honors English teacher recopmmended, but I did read Oedipus the King and expressed my opinion about the book in an essay. My teacher gave me a poor grade because she said my interpretation was wrong! Rather than support and encourage my creative thinking and expression, she wanted me to recite her opinions as if they were the only possibility and disregard my opinions as invalid.
My spelling stinks; I make up my own grammar; and my writing structure is strange. Despite these problems that would flunk anyone out of High School English, I am expressing myself clearly through the written word. Fortunately I have unlearned my high school lessons and boldly write in my own style!
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