Young Writers Society

Today I was suddenly overwhelmed with a massive hatred for my English class.

Writing is the most amazing thing ever.

My English class is like death. Maybe worse. I hate writing essays on pointless things, especially when the teacher calls them 'journals' when she really wants an essay and then makes comments about the content and mechanics...of a so called 'journal'. I don't know...but all I have to say is Journals are NOT Essays. Thanks.

Anyone else harboring an excessive hatred for their English class?

I hated when teachers made me write in a journal. I thought it was stupid and pointless, and it didn't help me improve my writing or my skills one bit. But it does help some.

One thing that your teacher has horribly wrong, though, is the fact that he/she is checking the mechanics and content of the journal. That's not the purpose of a journal. They should know better.

Oh I know!

She really WANTS an essay, but I refuse to write her an essay if she is going to call it a journal. Journals are leisure. Essays are death. She needs to say what she wants or she will continue to get what I want lol.

College honors classes are a bore sometimes.

I know what you mean--my teacher makes us write "journals" too, but I'm afraid to write it like a regular journal entry, that is, with the rambling and changing of subjects. So I feel your pain.

We don't do journals.

I love my English class, there are only 7 of us in the class and everyone has individual subjects (of their choice) and it has to be something that interests us. Naturally I did about writing and now I'm moving on to music.

I hated my old class only because people didn't take writing seriously and when we had to read our work out they just laugh and talk a load of ...

I actually enjoy my English class, but its on a bit of a tilt honestly.

I have to hold myself back when I understand the text, because normally, the rest of the class doesn't. It's a World Lit. class, so we're reading some very old texts and having read translated material before, I have to admit who ever translated these texts sucks. I also don't like being in the class because I feel somewhat above what we are doing, it makes me lazy and I care less about the class. It's boring to me. And I'm the only one who actually enjoys English. I mean....The majority of the kids dislike reading, don't understand grammar, and don't exactly know how to write good papers. It's only funny when we have a reading project, and out of the books giving, several pick White Fang (which my teacher considers a middle school book! She even told them) and I pick 500 page Crime and Punishment.

And I have one better, I hate when I hear this from some people in my English classes, "I love writing, but I hate reading." And then when I start in on how they are the same thing and you have to enjoy one to enjoy the other, etc, etc, they don't understand and stare at me like I have bugs crawling in my hair... So I've given up proving to not-so-much writers that reading and writing are the same thing

They are the same thing. *laughs* That's funny. I am such a book worm. My mom doesn't give me any required reading (I'm homeschooled) and for punishments she says no reading for two or three days (which leaves me in pure misery) or takes away my book.

I LOVE to write, and I LOVE to read. In fact, reading a lot usually makes you a good speller, from reading a certien word over and over again, I can picture it in my mind.

Anywho, I'm in a Writing Class, and I absoloughtly ADORE it.

reading a lot usually makes you a good speller

I wish that was true! That is the one thing that surprises all my family: I read like (to quote my father) books are eating me alive in my dreams if I don't read them, but I can't spell to save myself!

I learn to spell by repeatedly being yelled at by the spell checker in my word processor XD

I can't spell to save myself!

I am a really bad speller! I read a lot and it doesn't help so i agree with Claudette.

I don't like my englsh class because we write essay after essay which is really boring. We never write our own pieces of creative writing and spend all our lesson time reading Charles Dickens books and Shakespeare. (Shakespeare isn't to bad)

Haha yea. My English is actually a straight writing class, so all we do is write--but we don't get to pick our topics so it stinks.

I absolutely despise my LA class! It drives me INSANE!!! All we do is write about pointless short stories that were carefully selected by a bunch of cronies in Olympia inside a smoke filled ally!!! most of the questions refer to what we "feel". The rest of the time we learn pointless vocabulary that I learned when I was maybe let me see...8!! I only feel bad about it because I blame my overly perky teacher for the lack of interesting curriculm.

My English teacher is very good in terms of teaching. She's really funny and so efficient we can sometimes go off on some random tangent for most of class and still get work done. She's really good for people who usually don't understand the works on their own. A lot of people in my class who normally aren't that good at English get really involved in her class because she trains them to see things rather than just saying it. My class last year was terrible because our teacher would give us a book and say, "This is what it's about. And these are the motifs. And these are the themes. I've given you everything. Now slop them together into a really boring essay just the way I tell you to or I'll give you a crappy grade." But this year is better. She's a good teacher but I still feel kind of above the majority of the class. Our discussions are good, and I really like having the class in a discussion-like manner, but they're really constructed to help people understand the text, which I already do.

I wish we had advanced English, though. Next year I can take AP (Advanced Placement - college-level classes) Language & Composition but that'll be the first chance I get. I've been in advanced math since fifth grade and advanced science since seventh, but the first opportunity for English is in eleventh? That's screwed up.

Colleen

My Advanced Comp. B class last semester was really cool. We read "Catch-22" and wrote a paper on it, then we had to write a college/scholarship essay, which was really helpful. We also had a lot of in-class discussions, but only a few of us regularly participated. We also got to do some other fun stuff with writing, like writing a poem and a parable. For our final project, we got to choose a theme, then use two books and a movie to relate to that theme. It was a ton of reading/work but really interesting. We had to do a "journal" too at the beginning of the year, but it was pretty free-form. Basically, we just had to find a good prompt and write at least a page on it.

And as to the comment about reading making you a good speller: I agree, because I can spell really well, but it doesn't help at all in learning to pronounce these fancy words. For instance, I knew who Ptolemy was (and how to spell it) in elementary school, but I didn't know how to pronounce it until 9th grade. I wonder if that has anything to do with me being so far above my grade level in reading.

I'd absolutely hate my English class if I were actually serious in it once and a while. I can't sit through an entire english period without cracking up at something or other.

And I can't spell to save my life either. It's a little funny because I can type out a word and spell it correctly, but I can't write it with pencil and paper and get it right the first time. Sad...

My friends think i'm such a nerd, reading whenever I can instead of socializing. I think that I don't read nearly as much as I should, though. I didn't finish reading my list of books I told myself to finish before 2007 and here we are, in 2007, and i'm still 3 books from finishing the list. =(

I HATE my languege arts class, or really, the teacher. Everyone calls her crazy because she is. She constantly tells us that we're her worst class. We spend more time on random things then the work and she told me already that i need to be in a more advanced class, but here i am wasting a year learning things i already know and being bored to death while my classmates decide where the comma goes.