Language Investigation #3

I feel like my early education years were basically split into two areas regarding reading and writing strategies and requirements. The first half through 8th grade I feel like my teachers were really drill sergeants, demanding constant practice with numerous activities and daily involvement with reading and writing in every subject. By high school, however, it was more of a sink or swim approach. You got the grade you deserved based on the effort you put into an assignment.

Until high school, reading was seen as a daily requirement. We had planners that had to be signed nightly by our parents verifying that we had read for at least half an hour each day as well as a strong emphasis on the Accelerated Reader Program (this has many names in different schools) which were basic online reading quizzes synonymous for points and prizes. Reading outside of school was mostly pleasure based, though required, while reading in-school was always tested and analyzed. We would have daily questions to answer from our textbook reading, quizzes, and lots of busy work. Nearly every chapter we covered in all subjects but math had to be reviewed with Venn diagrams, summaries, character maps, timelines, etc. Close reading was always stressed.

Writing was also a daily activity. I remember having some sort of journal entry for many of my classes even up through high school. The writing prompts varied in many classes, but the format was always the same: the five paragraph essay aided by pre-writing strategies, several drafts, and peer editing before a final copy was submitted. Writing skills were aided by grammar lessons, spelling tests, dictionary activities, etc. Words like “hook,” “thesis,” “main points,” “introduction and conclusion” were used and understood by everyone in class by the fourth grade, or earlier. I would classify those earlier years as a constant training program; daily drilling and feedback and interaction with writing and reading in every class.

High school, however, was quite different. Planners detailing what our homework was for the night and the mandatory reading and writing everyday were well… no longer mandatory. I don’t know how many times I heard conversations about how many students passed a test about "To Kill A Mockingbird" without every picking up the book. “Sparks Notes” and other online materials replaced reading entirely for many people. For myself, I found that I had been so well trained in earlier years to pick important parts of the text for analysis that skimming a few pages of each chapter was sufficient enough to write a whole term paper. The vigilance exhibited by previous teachers was lacking in the last four years, instead it was up to the student to put in the effort on their own when it came to reading.

Writing styles and requirements changed drastically as well. Many of my teachers cringed at a five paragraph essay saying it lacked imagination and voice. It was the first time I had ever drifted away from that structure, which was a learning experience all in itself. Writing in high school not only became more involved, but it seemed to serve more of a purpose. We were no longer having to suffer from writing what seemed like pointless summaries on every chapter of our novels and analyzing each character with charts and drawings, we began to write persuasively and about topics of our choosing.

Because of this, I feel like by the time I started my freshman year of college I was very well versed in all types of writing, and had begun ( I don’t know if you ever really finish) to develop a writing voice of my own. Reading in college has led to many flashbacks of activities and study skills that, shockingly, were learned in primary grades. I feel like each successive year of school built on one another (as they should) but also pushed me as a student to become more and more independent. I moved from being required to write and read in certain ways and think critically in certain ways to having to know those methods instinctively and use them on my own terms.