<p>at our school, the english department wanted to stop people from reading sparknotes and succeeding on objective tests and stuff, so they made all of the objective tests quote identification questions, but they won't use the quotes on sparknotes, classicnotes, bookrags, etc. (which are all the important quotes!) so they test us on these totally random quotes from the text.
it's obnoxious.<br>
don't we read books to get meaning from them, not to know every minute detail?</p>
<p>my english teacher last year didn't use quotes but he had these insane questions that had answers that were so detailed that they would never be on any of those sites. i got so used to it by the second month that i would predict the questions. eventually it helps you to read for more detail and it does eventually help you understand the meaning more. in the book "the fall" there are so many tiny details that help give the book multiple meanings.</p>
<p>quotes are easy if you understand how different people in the book talk. everyone has their little quirks that can be identified in quotes.</p>
<p>Its a good way to stop cheaters, but i can see how it would be annoying</p>
<p>Our teachers just read the Sparknotes and ask questions that aren't covered in the chapter summaries.</p>
<p>Having detailed, not important quotes is just a waste of everybody's time, and is unfair to the student. Hell, I read the English books and sometimes I have trouble remembering every detail for my teacher's tests-- I'd hate to see how poorly I'd do on a quotes test.</p>
<p>We took the most ridiculous APeng Lit test the other day that was structured like that--in the only class with results back so far, only ONE person passed.
This is a sample question:
How are the general manager's eyes described?
a. cold
b. clear
c. shifty
d. blue</p>
<p>^^just unimportant, minute details like that. Halfway through, we all started yelling at our teacher (who's totally awesome but the teacher who made the test isn't..) about how "These questions do not illuminate the theme of the text!!"
I'm pretty sure wouldn't have been able to do well even if I had read Heart of Darkness.. ;)</p>
<p>That has never happened to me.</p>
<p>What a paranoid English department. Mine encorage Sparknotes use but it's partly because they don't want to use time up explaining the book to us.</p>
<p>YES. The teachers basically say that "Sparknotes = death" and make their tests on the stupidest stuff ever. Most people who don't read the books do better than the people who read the books and studied main themes</p>
<p>i had a question on one test freshman year that asked what color the main character's eyes were in a book. how would you remember that one detail out of like 300 pages of text...</p>
<p>my english teachers in the past have hated sparknotes and other things like that because it only provides one interpretation of the book. for "the heart of darkness" sparknotes says its a book about european imperialism, which is true, but it's also about many other things, not just that. when we wrote in class essays about the book, she could tell which people just used sparknotes because their essays were about european imperialism and didn't even answer the prompt.</p>
<p>Hmm...our English department goes about penalizing kids who read SparkNotes slightly differently...we get questions like:</p>
<p>Which of the following is NOT true about Character A?
a) He is not nice.
b) He is not studious
c) He is not careless.
d) A and C
e) None of the above except d</p>
<p>So if e were the right answer, none of the above is not true, so he IS studious, careless and nice? WHA-?! I guess the department's (flawed) logic is that only stupid kids read SparkNotes and can catch cheaters that way? I don't know...it's pretty stupid.</p>
<p>yeah last year in honors english, our teacher noticed us with the printed sparknotes and she was really mad at us. she changed the original test and it was so detailed, it was ridiculous.
ex:
Where was Johnny on the 3rd of September at 3:00PM and what was he holding on his RIGHT hand?
A. in the park holding ice cream
B. in the beach holding an umbrella
C. in his home holding his sandwich
D. in the mall holding a bag with clothes
E. in the school holding paper</p>
<p>it was so crazy</p>