Pretty bad ass falk. I would write same thing in my "busy work" assignments that I knew the teachers glossed over. The only differencing being I was right in my assessment

Sorry to bring back an old topic, but I can haz 2 cents.

I totally agree, and I think that English is fine... Until we start art projects, studying ancient crap, or poetry.

First, why the heck do I need to make a "sun" that on each different flame has a different literary element on it? I would rather just write it all on a paper. All that does, to write it on the "sun", restricts how much space I have to write. Art should stick to art, and English should stick to English.

Next, why do I care how we used to talk? I don't care how Romeo met Juliet, or that Cronus ate his children. I don't need to know that and I'll I'm going to do is try to forget it as soon as I leave the class. I'm there to learn how to speak and be literate, not to learn how they spoke in "ye olde era". I think there should be a different class like "The History of Literature" or something similar.

Last, poetry is the biggest waste of time! I just see poetry as an excuse to break the rules of grammar. Maybe 1 in ever 10,000 people will chose to have their profession be a poet. I could go on about poetry but then I might as well just start a new topic...

Anyway, I haz no more cents so I'm done.

First, the sun routine is to capture the attention of visual learners, or photographic learners. Like me. I don't remember things unless I can associate a memory with it. In the case of the sun, if I have five out of six literary elements, visually in my mind I would start traveling around each piece of the sun: did I get the top left flame? and the one pointing straight left?

Second, It is impossible to fit one lesson plan to everyone in the class. How do you remedy that? Go online (even wikipedia) and look up Romeo and Juliet. Explore why it was written like that, and the speaking styles of the time. Look up the slang and insults. Then relate that to how you talk today. (IE if slang was influenced by the church, how is slang and insults influenced by christianity today?). Take your learning into your own hands. Stop using school as a crutch and get out and learn something for yourself.

Third, poetry is not useless. The development of poetry tells a lot about a time period, a culture, and an instance. I hate free form, yes, but other types like the Villanelle or, ironically enough, a Shakespearan Sonnet can have very strict grammar rules. Oh, and for good measure, This is my favorite poem of all time. It is a Villanelle.

Sounds like omginbd is a Philistine.

So, you're interested in the purely functional side of English. I guess that's too bad because that can be the most deadly dull part of it, once you get into deconstructing the language into its component parts. I'm not much of a visual learner either (except if I'm doing a complicated essay and can't keep all the relationships together in my head; I draw a diagram) and the flower thing is the sort of work I would have found ridiculous at school.

Literature is great. Read some George Orwell if you want to see some good writing, though I'd recommend starting with his non-fiction like Down and Out in Paris and London before moving onto books like 1984.

As for poetry - some of it is very good but a lot of it is drivel. Read any poem by William McGonagall to see what I mean... My favourite poem is Alfred Tennyson's The Eagle, though I'm no literature buff.

The thing I don't get about English class is why you need to know what parts of sentences are called as well as construction of sentences. You would never spend time piecing together words to form a grammatically correct sentence in a conversation, would you? I also don't get why proper grammar (to the extreme) is important. As long as I can understand what a person is saying, it's fine with me, and some rules distort the sentence in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I love English class, but some aspects of it just seem pointless.

Anyways, that was a badass move, Falkoner. Just don't start off on the wrong foot (which is kind of pointless to tell you since you already did it) and don't be a smart ass. Since young people don't have an opinion that matters, I'd just shut my trap.

Poetry a waste of time? I take it that you listen to nothing except for instrumental music?


Ever tried becoming fluent in a second language? Knowing the parts of a sentence is an extremely useful thing to know when it comes to learning languages. You think it's not important because you have been taught English your entire life without you thinking that you were 'learning' anything. But if you were this age now, and just trying to learn any language, you would see why knowing sentence structure is important.

Eh, I didn't quite describe the whole picture. I love to read, and I like lyrics in my songs, (but I actually prefer most string quartet renditions of songs to the originals) however I find that culture is something that should be studied in History, not English. And yes, I like to study grammar way more than anything else in English.


Haha that's ironic because for my reading book I just bought 1984

To rephrase, I don't hate literature, I hate the history of literature. I think that is something that should be taught in history. I don't hate English as a subject, I just hate the way it is generally taught. I know that it is impossible to please everyone, and meet the way that everyone learns, but I feel like there should at least be a choice if you know you don't learn visually. Maybe it was just my teacher, but she would assigned the "sun" project, and then graded you on how good your sun looked. I'm not an artist. I can't draw, and trust me, I've tried. I did awful on that assignment because of that. Lastly, poetry. I don't mind it, and I don't mind studying some famous poems, but I don't like to have to interpret it. When I read things, that is what I think, then I move on. I don't look for a deeper meaning, or read it again. I just read it, I know what it says. Maybe this is why I like science fiction O.0