Language Investigation 3

In primary school I don't remember having to read a lot of "required" material. I remember reading books like A Christmas Carol, Number the Stars, and others. I mostly remember reading books of my choice or short stories found in large "reading" books. These stories were always incredibly boring and the books always had a weird smell. For writing, I was taught grammatical "rules" that were easy to rhyme such as: "I before E, except after C" or the vowels, "A,E,I,O,U and sometimes Y." There are others I can't recall at the moment. There were always rules though when you were spelling words or putting them together in a sentence. I remember doing worksheet after worksheet of noun/verb/adjective practice. I also remember doing a lot of vocabulary from vocab books. In retrospect, these vocab books were very helpful and I still remember words from them that I didn't think I would ever use. The elementary school I went to was very strict about homework, directions, and most importantly, rules. So all of the teachers taught rules and didn't allow you to question them. It wasn't until later, in my secondary (and further) years of schooling that I realized that rules weren't necessary for a lot of my English studies.

In my secondary years of school, I remember learning that there were exceptions to the rules. For example, in elementary school I was taught to never start a sentence with the word "Because." In middle school, my English teacher taught me ways that you could start a sentence with the word "Because" that still worked and were acceptable in the English community. This is the same class I learned what clauses, conjunctions, and other fancy terms for sentences were called. I also recall getting my pick of books to read (at least in seventh grade.) Required reading for eighth grade included books such as: Oliver Twist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and others. As I progressed into High School, I began to learn about Greek Mythology, How to Kill a Mockingbird, American Literature, and most importantly, how to write a thesis statement. There were strict rules on how to write a thesis statement correctly during this time. Thesis statements were only one sentence that told your reader what your entire paper/opinion was. This was tricky to learn, but I can look back now and see that strict rules were required for thesis statements because otherwise it would have been too confusing to learn. These rules were taught to help beginner students get an idea of the patterns in the English language. At the time however, these rules were hard to completely understand, but helped me develop basic skills that could be elaborated in college.

As a college reader and writer, these conventions were an excellent base for what I now know I can take creative liberty with. In college, I feel that professors are less concerned with a correct following of grammatical rules, and more concerned with the content and critical analysis a paper demonstrates about a reading. As you get older, less people will correct you for having "poor grammar" or not wording a sentence correctly. While it is important, in college you learn that if it makes sense and it does a good job of critically analyzing a text, then that is satisfactory enough for a good paper.