Language Investigation #3

Everyone remembers the five paragraph essay. It works in all cases of primary and secondary education; it’s in fact, what they expect. College goes two ways with this one. It’s ok in early composition classes, but hardly perfect for upper division English classes. It’s a great foundation, and is helpful in learning how to write. The problem is there isn’t as much room to expand. College is about expanding your thoughts, and in turn, expanding the length of papers. Research papers are very important. Many papers are research papers in college, even when you are writing about text. Usually outsides sources are a necessity in essays. In primary and secondary school, the emphasis on what kind of sources is considered academic. Also, the introduction of an essay should be expanded. High School students are smart enough to comprehend building an introduction and conclusion that sound intelligent. Also, it’s hard to write a five paragraph essay in a paper that is twenty pages. Personally, I felt like I was a decent writer coming out of high school, which is why I chose English for a major. My freshman comp classes were especially easy to get A’s on papers. After transferring schools, and diving full bore into upper division English classes, I quickly realized the shortcomings of early writing education. There was not enough emphasis on tense fluidity; there was also not enough instruction on how to make a paper flow. Transitions are still something I have a hard time with. Transition sentences in college are not as important as they were when we were going to school earlier. Transitions are just more complex now. How does one easily, and in a sophisticated manner, change from one idea to another without sounding like a ninth grader – it shouldn’t be a surprise because we were ninth graders when we learned it. Schools are getting better, but there is still a problem with schools collaborating. Learning to write better is a task to be learned in college, but by the time college rolls around, you are already expected to be able to write well. I’m not saying students aren’t prepared, but there is a huge gap between a B paper, and an A paper at the collegiate level. How is that attained?

Grammar is another part of growing up in Language that gets thrown to the wayside. Grammar rules are the most straight forward set of guidelines that apply to writing. As a young reader, you don’t look for grammar rules in reading. As I have read more in my adulthood, especially for classes, it’s easier to identify the depth of writing. Writers take a lot of time and require skill and knowledge to mold language and write sufficiently. Writing is a graphic representation of the spoken language. The division happens because often, there are no distinctions between spoken and written language. Writing the same way we speak does not cut it because speaking has become so relaxed and socialized that it doesn’t convey academic language the way writing is expected to. We were taught parts of speech, and ways in which sentences need to be formed in to have agreement, but we were not shown how to write within those boundaries. I didn’t ever write with the direct intention that the preposition comes before the infinitive. We would identify what direct, and indirect objects were. Teachers would give us worksheets to circle and label items. If I remember correctly though, this study of grammar did not stretch further than sixth grade for me. Students should still be learning, and not enter college being perfect scribes, but there is a direct correlation between the writing process and learning language. Language is pressed at a young age, but perhaps technicalities are pushed on kids that cannot use, and comprehend the rules of writing and language. This needs to be taught all the way up until graduation of high school. I don’t remember talking about grammar at all in high school. This is sad because many students, me included don’t know grammar as well as is required. I want to expand in writing, but find it hard if I don’t know how to expand because I don’t know the rules of writing at the higher academic tier. It also affects the ability to identify genius in texts without proper knowledge.