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Rank: Fuckstick
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Joined: 12/6/2007
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Location: Canada
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Man congrats to Mrs. Crawdad. If it weren't for people like her, our nation would be filled with obese illiterate people who think People magazine is high literature. Thank God I'm in Canada......
jokes jokes. :D
But really I thought I knew everything when I went into college. I was an A+ student. They failed my ass in the prelim English aptitude test.
After taking some boring but useful Writing Clinic'sessions, I still don't know if my writing is coherent. Some papers I hand in, the profs give me As. Then sometimes you get a prof who just rapes your paper.
Thing is, college is supposed to be BEYOND the 5 paragraph format, but no one ever tells you anything about writing a 40 page thesis. So what do you do? I copy and emulate the readings I do in my class. But still somehow those are world-renown geezers, and everyone worships their writing anyway, and structurally it might not be the best examples to copy from.
Then once in a while you read someone so brilliant and logical you just die from embarrassment of the comparison. Aka Dick Cheney. Then you start thinking maybe they just have a better BRAIN than you. Or at least they know something called logic. Which you will never grasp.
Boo to that.
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Rank: Fecal Impaction For the Win!
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Joined: 6/16/2006
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This is something that I personally have a lot of thoughts about considering I am a Junior in college and see peers butchering essays. I agree that it definitely needs to be taught better and earlier in some schools. I honestly didn't think it was as big an issue as it was until I tutored students. I learned MLA format in 5th grade and applied it a lot in middle and high school. I learned APA format towards the end of high school and use it often in college as I am a business student. In general, this is something that needs to be focused on more at an earlier age because communication will make or break a career. It's really unfortunate that some students don't have the proper written and verbal language skills they should have, especially since its importance is growing rapidly now. EDIT: Oh yeah, and another thing I noticed is that professors seem like they have to "dumb" the material down in terms of language requirements so that students can pass their classes. It's a small favor here and there on some things that ultimately just allows for students to forget important information they need to carry with them. I don't know from a personal standpoint, but from what I've seen it appears that some teachers are too worried about being disrespected by their students if the material is hard, so they make it easier or give breaks. This is just a theory from my observations, however. {pDs} Lead Salad: bike why did you change your name
Jessica343: so I can get heals
{pDs} Lead Salad: oh damn good idea
{pDs} Lead Salad has changed their name to {pDs} Lead Salad (is a girl)
Jessica343: hahah
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Rank: Polio Power!
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Joined: 6/14/2008
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Location: San Diego
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[quote=Leon Switch]Man congrats to Mrs. Crawdad. If it weren't for people like her, our nation would be filled with obese illiterate people who think People magazine is high literature. Thank God I'm in Canada......
Thing is, college is supposed to be BEYOND the 5 paragraph format, but no one ever tells you anything about writing a 40 page thesis. So what do you do? I copy and emulate the readings I do in my class. But still somehow those are world-renown geezers, and everyone worships their writing anyway, and structurally it might not be the best examples to copy from.
quote]
This says a lot I would say, in all my years in college (read: five years thanks to having to put myself through it and not being a hot stripper type) I've yet to meet any english teacher who actually puts forth a coherent structure as to what they are looking for in work. Now this also applies to putting forth an ideal for a given type of paper. Obviously a research paper will have a much different format and appearance than an argumentative paper, not to mention a free-thought writing assignment.
Here lies the problem, read any good book (no, not "good" book as in reknown and all that hyped up bull, but good as in "hey, that was good to read") and the writing style will almost always be a bit at odds with classical training. Some of my favorite novels have downright bizzare writing (fight club, Kiln People, etc.) To try and emulate this during an english class would be bizzare, but yet I think of these people as succesful "english" majors in theory as they are proffesional writers. So it's really up to the teachers on a consistent basis to not only remind what they are looking for, but to actually give thought to what is appropriate stylistically in any setting, and not to presume the student knows the difference thoroughly between the different writing formats.
Apparently this has been a rant and I apologize.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Location: washington
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I think I first learned how to write the 5 paragraph essays in middle school. I learned college application essays in my high school english classes, which where usally 6-7 paragraph essays. I'm just glad that welding involves way more math than english.
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Rank: Fecal Impaction For the Win!
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Location: Flint, Michigan
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I just wanna know who thought it was a good idea to make other class besides English do Collin's Writing at least 10 times per semesters...
Obviously a type 5 essay on Math is the best idea ever...
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Rank: Admiral OCD
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Location: Parallel Universe
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Grade school perhaps? After that the only significant change was in the 9th grade. My English teacher refused to grade my papers after the first one I turned in because my handwriting is teh sux. So I learned to type and typed everything on a mechanical typewriter which had a QWERTY keyboard, but used mechanical arms that would strike an ink ribbon and leave an imprint of a type letter on a piece of paper. So I taught myself to turn in first drafts by organizing my thoughts because I didn't want to retype the paper and I could only see one line of type on a tiny LCD screen before it would type onto the page. Yes, I'm old. Now leave me alone. And get off my lawn. You should be more like Cantrip.  Twitchy: "I pulled a Cantrip . . ." GivePeaceAChance: "If the Tempest had nipples, I'd pinch that shit." Xylicon: "I'm about to deliver my [Richard] in your face for posting that stupid shit. " WDF?: "He keeps reaming me... night after night... I'm rather sore." GivePeaceAChance: "OMG MY NIPS ARE HARD" llenta: "cantrip, you fail!!!" Filliam H. Muffman: "i'm on top of dick"
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Rank: Administration
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Posts: 1,422
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Location: USA, Indiana
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Lead Salad wrote:I never paid attention in english class. English fucking sucks, I learned how to write by reading. I know this is old news, but thats how I basically learned too. I hated English class, but loved reading. You can probably tell that because I write sentences like I would say them out loud. Its nicer to read, but I don't have grammatically correct sentences most of the time. Ah, also I was homeschooled, so I read a LOT. Oh, right. Answering your question. I probably learned how to in 5th grade. "1 Paragraph intro, 3 paragraph body, 1 paragraph conclusion". We would usually write the body first then figure out our intro and conclusion - that made it easier on our little brains. If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan My Backpack
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