Language Investigation #3

My primary and secondary school teachers addressed reading and writing from a much different approach than the majority of my professors. I believe this has a lot to do with standardized testing. We were always pressured to develop clearly stated opinions about a particular topic and then write the standard five-paragraph paper (introduction, three main points, and conclusion). I was rarely given the chance to practice creative writing. Come to think of it, I am not sure I was ever given a chance to experiment with creative writing in the classroom. I found chapter five of Lives on the Boundary to be particularly interesting and inspiring because of this. According to my secondary and primary teachers, grammar is one of the most important aspects of writing. Therefore, grammar played a major role in the grades we received based on our papers. I happened to be mediocre at grammar, but found it unusual when I received better grades on what I considered to be worse papers simply because my grammar was up to par. It was as though the content held very little value in the eyes of my teachers. I never thought of it as unusual at the time because that was all I had known. Therefore, I would spend much less time considering which theme I thought to be most prevalent and important in a certain reading. Instead, I would spend the majority of my time grammatically revising each paper. Incidentally, my grammar was still below average by the time I completed high school, and my creative writing skills remained dormant. The methods of writing practiced at my school only left me with a mechanical knowledge of writing.

As for reading material, we often read adolescents’ literature in middle school and high school. We were asked to write based on very clear and simple prompts. For instance, the most common writing prompt in my high school was “State and develop what you believe to be the driving theme in” whichever book we were reading at the time. All of these characteristics of my experiences with reading and writing in primary and secondary schools greatly affected my previous experiences as a college writer. For instance, I took a “Study of Literature” class first semester of my freshman year, and attempted to write standard five-paragraph response papers to certain readings we completed. My professor was not at all upset by this, but did, however, inform me that it would be a good idea for me to try and expand my boundaries and attempt to write more freely. He even advised me to try and write a paper without initially having a clear answer to the prompt in mind, and that the answer will eventually make itself apparent. Ever since that particular course, I have struggled to find my own style in regards to writing. Until college, I was unaware of such a thing as style as a result of the methods by which I was taught. I suppose the implicit “rules and regulations” in regards to writing in my middle and high school primarily constrained imagination and creativity. The explicit “rules and regulations” were based on mechanical and grammatical errors. My education prior to college did help me understand the value of creating a well developed paper with clearly stated points, proofs, and examples. However, my college education has allowed me to tamper with certain writing conventions and restrictions, therefore increasing my creative writing abilities.