<p>I will not major in English and any close related to English majors. My major will be sciences/math/economics or something like that so I will not take some hardcore English classes. Are they that hard in universities (like UCs)? I moved in the US 2 years ago, I have A in my P English class but our teacher always tells us how hard English is in college. Is it true?</p>
<p>no its actually excessivly easy.</p>
<p>Usually your required English classes in college are just going to be to make sure that you actually learned how to write essays and spell and use correct grammar and so on in high school. If you actually did learn all of that, it should pretty much be a repeat.</p>
<p>"no its actually excessivly easy."</p>
<p>Well thats not universally true.</p>
<p>It depends. My English class was essay biased. We turned in 5, 6 to 8 page topical essays on assigned reading material. If you like to write and spend free time pleasure reading it should be easy. The essays were 50% of your grade and the midterm and final combined were the other 50%. Class was usually fun, the professor will usually bring up interesting parts of reading every class meeting while the class often gets into groups to help each other analyze the characters, authors motives, etcetera. </p>
<p>The big thing is the professor expects you to know how to write before coming into the class. Some courses require that you purchase an MLA or other writing style handbook. Sometimes the prof. will go over what they expect to see in the essays, but for the most part your on your own. If you need help students usually get a tutor or see the prof. during office hours.</p>
<p>Any English class worth it's weight will have a research paper (usually 15-20 pages) due on the date of the final exam. They often want you to pick a topic related to the ones covered in the course and find outside resources to help you write the paper.</p>
<p>Hope this helps. I took this class at UCR so it may be different depending on what your school requires. Some schools have a more analytical based English course where you focus on rhetoric.</p>
<p>Oh well, I'll choose course in which essays don't play the major part.</p>
<p>Different things are required at different schools, and sometimes these requirements are at quite different levels. Some schools have very serious English departments (BERKELEY), some not as serious, and some are only serious for the English majors. At Berkeley, many students are required to take two basic reading and composition classes (most of which are not in the English department), but many pass out of this requirement. If you're in the college of engineering, you're required to take a certain number of humanities classes, business majors are required to take an extra semester of English, but most people aren't required to take the hard-core English classes.</p>
<p>I go to UC Davis and am a science major & absolutely hated english classes in high school. At Davis there is a lower-division writing requirement and an upper-division writing requirement. For the lower division requirement you have to take either English 1, 3 or Native American Studies 5 (random, I know).. I took NAS 5 and it wasn't that bad. A few short essays on a book with native american main characters and an in-class written essay for the final.
For the upper division writing requirement you can either take a test or take one class from a broad list of specialized writing courses. My friend took the test, failed the first time but passed the second time. I took the "Writing in the Sciences" course (104E) and I think it was the best english class I've ever taken. No reading books & interpretting meaning and symbolism! It was writing fake scientific papers where the only sources you needed were other scientific papers. Two major writing assignments & two minor one-page assignments. Not horrible at all. You could even have the professor proof-read it before you turned it in.</p>