In my past English classes, I have read many novels such as Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Catcher in the Rye. I also have experience reading epic poems such as Homer's Odyssey, and Beowulf, as well a poems from such notable writers as Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. I have read Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. In my senior year of English, I studied the comparisons and contrast between the characters of Odysseus and Beowulf throughout their journeys, as well as the similarities in the writing styles of each epic poem. This included a study of epithets (Odyssey) and kennings (Beowulf).
Toward the end of my senior year in English, after finishing both the Odyssey and Beowulf, I had to prepare a hypothetical paper in which I would create a thesis statement and at least three support topics that I would put in a real paper comparing the character evolutions of Odysseus and Beowulf. I also wrote an actual character paper on The Catcher in the Rye, in which I described the roles of the characters around Holden, how they influenced his decisions, and what they, as characters, symbolized to Holden. In my sophomore English class, I had to write a research paper in which I had to study a topic that interested me, create a thesis statement, and then prove my thesis statement with the facts I had found in my research. To help us learn how to write papers, my teachers would show us how to use idea-webs to organize our thoughts on each topic sentence. We were also taught to use notecards to organize the facts that we had found for our research papers so we could easily cite them as we wrote our papers.
I have done all these things. Going through the Spartan Training routines set up by Dr. Hasley, brought us through a wide range of literature. Along with are military training we studied under the tutelage of artificial intelligence Déjá, we had a grueling study in all education. As well as the literary hits the 21st century students had to read, we also had the futuristic military works to read. We went over such military books as Low G Fighting, by N.O. Gravity, and Space Warfare, S.W Trilogy. We also read the military books of old, such as Art of War, by Sunzi. Discussing the books of your time, I do understand your pain. The Books of the 20th century can be dull compared to some of the great literary proficiency of the 23rd and 24th century. I hope you meet the author G. R. R. Martin. He is proficient in the Fire and Ice trilogy is huge hit in the 25th century and many a people would like to have met him.
ReplyDeleteYour high school English classes must have been fun because you were required to read some really good books. The books you listed are not only all classics, but also very diverse and were written during different time periods. Our English classes were very similar in terms of what we had to read and the research paper(s) we had to write. High school English classes definitely were intense in terms of the reading material but I definitely think that all those essays and books prepared us for college. I think we can both agree that it is a lot different from having to read multiple chapters of a book and write a reflection (or short essay) over the weekend to writing a blog once a week (along with other homework). I find this English class much more relevant and contemporary because we are learning to write/communicate through different types of media. I’m not trying to say that our high school English classes were not fun at times, but this college English class is more fun and more applicable to the type of world we live in. (ENGL 106)
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