Jasmine Delaine Ms.

Ingram Genre Study Assignment 05 December 2013

Part 1: High School Analysis-Literary Response Prompt In high school, reading literature and writing essays about it is greatly emphasized. As high school students, we are made to read everything from poetry to Shakespeare. We analyze every little detail so that we can gain a better understanding of the author, the time period, and the story itself. Once weve studied the work for a period of several weeks, we are told to write an essay. We are given a prompt that asks us to explain the main charact ers thought process, how we interpret a specific scene, or the importance of the setting on the plot. Whenever I think of literary responses, I think about my senior year in high school and how we studied Hamlet. My classmates and I wrote multiple essays about Hamlets thought process and how it affected his actions. Hamlet, of course, is a very famous play written by Shakespeare. Hamlets father, the king, is killed by his brother. Hamlets uncle then marries the queen and becomes the king of Denmark. The play tells the story of the lengths that Hamlet goes to in order to seek revenge for his fathers death. Shakespearean plays always have important quotes and monologues that can be explored further. In Hamlet, one of the most famous monologues is the To be or not to be monologue. My job as a student was to read this, or another portion of the play, analyze it, and write a response to present to the teacher. Sometimes we would be given prompts. Our

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prompts would be similar to this: In Act 5, scene 2, Hamlet remarks, "His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy." Explain Hamlet's motivation behind this comment and examine how true his remark is. The quote in the prompt is a very important part because some teachers may not let you use your book. You are expected to know exactly what part of the play the quote is coming from because otherwise, you wont be able to write a solid essay. The next sentence tells you what you are supposed to argue in the essay. This is how the teacher determines whether or not you have read the text and paid attention in class. With Shakespearean plays, teachers always spend a lot of time on certain sections. These are normally the sections that you will have to write about. If you were paying attention, all you had to do was base your essay on what the teacher said in class. The purpose of the response was supposed to be for you to gain a deeper understanding of the text. However, the main purpose became to get a good grade in the class. That was the only thing that mattered. The genre of literary responses is supposed to help students gain a deeper understanding of the text used in class, its author, and the time period that it was written in. Unfortunately, since all students can just re-write what they have been told, this does not make literary responses very successful in fulfilling its purpose. Also, if the audience is changed, the responses are not successful. This severely limits the usefulness of the genre. Math, science, and history courses have no need for literary responses. Therefore, the teachers of these courses are not going to find them helpful. In order for this genre to be more successful, students will have to be encouraged to think deeper about what they are reading.

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However, literary responses can be successful because they can be great practice for the IB English Exam. There are two parts to the exam, Paper 1 and Paper 2. For one of the papers, the student is given a piece of prose and poetry and is expected to annotate the piece and write a response. By writing many responses in class, it will be a lot easier to complete the exam. This is important because the IB Exams determine whether you have mastered all of the skills you have been taught and also if you receive your IB Diploma.

Part 2: College Analysis- English 1101 Blog So far this semester, the most surprising assignment that Ive gotten is the blog that I have for English 1101. Ive never had a blog before, and I also didnt like writing very mu ch, so the idea of having one scared me a little at first. Blogs can be created for any and everything. Many people write blogs because there is something that theyre passionate about and they want to share it with others. However, there are also educational blogs. These blogs are created to inform the world of important information. My blog is an educational blog. Im informing other classmates of what I have learned and the questions I have about different topics. However, Im not a very good writer and Im not very passionate about writing. I didnt think that I would be able to write a blog filled with wonderful thoughts and inquiries about all things writing. However, writing a blog isnt as scary as I thought it would be. I was pleasantly surprised. For this blog, the intended audience is both my English professor and my classmates. They comment on my posts and my posts are graded on how well I respond to the questions. In

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the beginning, my sole purpose for having this blog was to get a good grade. Thats the mindset that I had coming into this class. I wasnt thinking about trying to grow as a writer and a thinker. However, this blog is actually making me reflect about everything that I have done in my school career up until now, and how I can improve. I feel that this genre has a lot of explicit messages. Blogs are mostly made to exercise a certain viewpoint. This way, it wont be difficult to figure out the true purpose of the blog. The blog for my English course is a tool to help us reflect on writing. In these posts, we ask our questions, state our opinions, and show everyone who we are. In my third blog post, one of the questions that I had to respond to was that I could write about anything that I wanted. I took this time to write about how Im not enjoying my College Algebra class. Since blogs are straightforward, I was completely honest about how I felt. At one point I said, This class has got to be the most boring and frustrating class I have ever taken in my entire life. This sentence really captured how I felt, and by writing honestly, it became easier to write what I had to say. Even though there are a lot of explicit messages, there are some implicit messages as well. For example, with educational blogs it seems as if the author is providing nothing but facts and statistics. This is mostly true because the authors opinion is buried within the blog. If someone were to create a blog about abortion, and they were completely against the idea, they would post a lot of negative facts and statistics to convince the readers that having an abortion is unethical. The same would happen for an author writing about a topic

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they supported. They want to encourage others to support the same idea, so theyll write positive things about said topic. Its all a matter of perspective. Blogs are really famous genres of writing. The topics also vary greatly, and because of this variety, there are certain limitations. For blogs referring to topics of great importance, such as politics or medicine, the author cant write as if he/she is writing to friends. The same principle applies when the scenario is reversed. If the blog was simply for entertainment, the writer cant have a professional tone. Also, blogs criticizing a specific religion or another sacred topic arent appropriate. They are very disrespectful to many people. However, they do allow you speak freely about any subject. Many fight for their right to say what they choose. We should be grateful that we have this opportunity. Blogs are a great tool to use in any English or writing course. Writing isnt solely about writing research papers. Writers are able to choose what they write about. By assigning blogs, students can better express their opinions and become better critical thinkers at the same time. Students today are stripped of their voice in high school. They are told that opinions arent appropriate when writing. Blogs are a great way to disprove this theory.

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Part 3: Conclusion Looking at the texts analyzed previously, there is a major difference between high school and college. Yes, it is true that in high school it is easy to pretend to know the information. Students can easily Google assignments given and find a website that gives all of the correct answers. However, its much more than that. In high school, your opinion does not matter. When students have to write literary responses, they are based on the text that was read. There is always a quote or a passage that has some sort of significance. The teacher spends a lot of time in class helping you dissect every single word. Then, later in an essay, the students are supposed to take one of the many ideas talked about in class and elaborate more. There is never a chance for students to read the passage and to see what they interpret. If there is such an opportunity, the opinion is disregarded because it may not be in line with what the teacher has said or is about to say. If the student is bold enough to write their essay about how they interpret the passage, the ending grade will not be a reflection of how hard the student worked on the essay. One of my current classmates told the rest of the class about a time during his high school career similar to this. He told us how in one of his classes, he was assigned an essay and he was able to choose hos topic. The topic he wanted to write about was not approved by his teacher, however, his teacher allowed him to carry on with it. The teacher did not have the same opinion as my classmate when it came to the topic that was chosen. The teacher then proceeded to give the paper a bad grade, not because it was poorly written, but because of his

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personal viewpoints. This was very upsetting to him. This experience that was shared made me think of my time in high school. I never knew what I was going to write about. I always questioned and doubted myself because I wasnt sure if the teacher was going to like my topic was. In the end, my essays would be too broad and poorly written. This makes students hate writing. If they cant write about what they choose, why write at all? Luckily, it got better after graduation. In college, there are many opportunities for students to say what they would like. Yes, there are guidelines that we have to follow. However, those guidelines dont completely limit what we are able to say. The instructions that we get when we are given an assignment help us figure out what we want to say and how we want to say it. They dont tell us what we are allowed to say. By being able to express ourselves, we become better writers because we are thinking about organization and content more and more. In college, these things are important. The more we practice thinking about organization and content, the better our writing will become.