English ~ The supposed 'bane of everyone's existence'? (1 Viewer)

[harrietty]

So I'm getting the feel that the majority of people hate, or at least dislike English.

I go to a relatively small school, so we're not a very good representation of the student population. But, when I scroll down post after post of hard working BoS'ers, I see countless evil/angry faces next to Advanced/Standard English, side by side with the words 'I hate English!'. I wonder, why is this?

In my own experience, I do well at every subject except Advanced English. Always in English I perform well, but never as well as my other subjects.

Anyway, every time I sit down to type my assignment I get extremely frustrated and disappointed in myself. Me, along with various other well-performing students in my class refer to the English classroom as the 'torture chamber'. It's not that bad, I just don't really know why a lot of people hate it.

But next year, when things start to get extremely serious in HSC, I'm taking a different approach and will try to think positively about English and try to engage myself in learning and really understanding the content.

I just want to know, why is it that a lot of people dislike English? Is it simply because we are required to think critically about the concepts in question, and there is no purely right or wrong answer? So, we have no clear definition of what we should be aiming for, seeing as how English is a very thinking-based subject?

I'm sure there are many people who actually like English, and I do, I just hate under performing and never knowing how to get the best possible marks, since a lot of teachers mark according to their ideas/standards, which is stupid.

 

[Absolutezero]

Here's some existing discussion on it:

http://community.boredofstudies.org/showthread.php?t=226735

http://community.boredofstudies.org/showthread.php?t=290229

http://community.boredofstudies.org/showthread.php?t=259546

 

[Dan895]

I would say the hatred on this forum for the most part is because majority of the people on this forum are math and science orientated. I'm not saying that people can't be good at maths, science and english, but there is usually a correlation of good at maths therefore bad at english looking in the most general fashion I can. Its not that Scientists can't think critically real science is at the forefront of critical thinking in the real world. My personal oppionion is that A maths and science nut goes hmmm Acceleration due to gravity is allways 9.8m.s-^2 but, the metaphor and simile in this text means different things to English teacher A and English teacher B. And the subjective nature of the suject leads to frustration when they could be deriving the gradient function of a parabola which will allways yeild the same function.
But who knows I could be completly wrong

 

[artard]

Belonging.

 

[tOnnyAyye]

A lot of people dislike English possibly because they don't know what the benefits of studying it for the HSC. I agree with harrietty about critical thinking. From my perspective, English is about justifying themes with evidence from analysis in text. e.g. Analyse how relationships between individuals influences their perception on belonging. There's no right or wrong way of answering the question, as long as you provide strong evidence.

To 2013ers, in both trials and the hsc, you have 40 mins to write an extended response on belonging (paper 1) + 2 hours on 3 extended response (paper 2). This tests how well and quickly you can justify your opinion in relation to themes. It's essential in the future, especially when being asked difficult questions (e.g. during interviews for a job), where you need to think on the spot and provide proof.

A bit about my english HSC. I was writing band 3 answers in year 11 because I didn't understand how to answer and what to put in it. As the year progresses, i wrote high band 4 results which was a good indication of improvements. This motivated me to find another approach to answering in order to improve my results. Year 12 was when I have to change my perspective on English, I thought it was a torture chamber but i realised that it was not. During Year 12, I always ask English teachers for help,suggestions, etc. and that paid off well for me. My advice for 2013ers is to think about the benefits of studying English. Not only does it improves your response, analytical and critical thinking skills, but these carries over to over subjects (in my case, it was business, maths and economics), which boosted my weak subject(eco) 10 marks higher than what i expected.

And obviously, English is compulsory and it does count towards your ATAR so for those aiming to achieve 85+, do well in English, you'll thank me later. Don't concentrate too much on your strong subjects but rather balance out the subject (mines not well balanced).

 

[Chronost]

What I hate about English is that your opinion has to be justified with techniques AND quotes....seriously I much prefer history over English,history you analyse and then you state your evidence through quotes or facts....I still find it hard to remember every technique and and it's definition, and sometimes it's just really dam annoying. It doesn't help with the fact that if I don't state enough quotes or techniques I can't move over a band 4 in an essay(or so my teacher says). I find that in History it's much easier to state your opinion and in many cases it's much more clear. Also I find that English rewards people who use extensive(or 'fancy') words in their essay well(especially when I say the same thing in my essay but instead use very plain English)...which to me just says you have a better vocab.History has some jargon, but it doesn't reward people just for using better words.

I also found that the teacher usually takes her own opinion on texts as law, and doesn't give much way to being a critical thinker. Usually themes, possible meanings etc.. are much more limited in what they tell then say history when you look at a source that's a painting or such.

 

[RivalryofTroll]

Funnily enough, while English has been the bane of my existence from Kindy to Yr 10, the subject has started to become one of my most consistent & favourable subjects now. In fact in Year 11 and start of Year 12 so far, my English results were more consistent than my Mathematics results. Historically from Kindy to Yr 10, Mathematics was definitely more consistent but that somehow changed in senior years....

Yes, I still hate creative writing and that will always be the bane of my existence but I'm quite comfortable with essays, speeches and analytical stuff in recent times.

There'll always be things that I don't like doing (reading long novels, writing creative pieces, etc.) but there are other things that I like (such as poem, visual analysis).

 

[LoveHateSchool]

I know I'm somewhat of a minority BOSer here, but I actually love some aspects of English.

I'm a bit of a poetry buff, so I loved the Module where were we did poetry and having it as critical was a score! (Mod B). Mod A took a little bit to get into comparing my two texts, but Shakespeare and Pacino paired together was actually interesting to discuss. That said, I disliked Conflicting Perspectives and Belonging because I find those type of thematic studies to be limiting and ignoring chunks of texts not fitting the theme or really moulding stuff to just fit with the theme of the module.

Ext 1 I liked some of the texts of my unit (Plath poetry mainly) and it did give a chance for a big focus on creative writing with my module being quite broad. In my module I managed to write things from an astronomer haunted by the past to a story narrated by death. So big range.

Ext 2 the freedom is good if not daunting. It was definitely the longest composition I had written and so at least I produced something substantial

But I always liked English all through HS (except it was made hard 9/10 by the awful texts and slightly grating teacher) but yeah. Minority BOSer here-but I've always loved discussion, creative writing, public speaking, poetry and did drama outside school.

 

[2xL]

Just so everyone knows, even if you absolutely despise English e.g. me, you can still do well in the subject. Just sit through the torture, it'll be worth it. (Not just sit, do some work as well )