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<p>Not necessarily. It’s useful to be able to retain the basic facts after reading something. Asking for a specific street might be a bit too detailed (though it’s been 9 years since I read that book so I don’t remember its significance) and 7th grade might be a bit old (maybe) to ask that type of question, but a lot of people do struggle with basic comprehension.</p>
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Good communications skills are important. While I do not feel that flawless grammar is necessary for communication, I actually do think that the mechanics of the language are worth teaching. However, that really needs to happen at a very early age in order to be effective. By the time a student hits high school, they will likely be fairly stuck in their grammatical ruts and change becomes quite difficult.</p>
<p>Reading and writing are both important, but I don’t really see why we need to read fictional literature.</p>
<p>^ Fiction is usually more interesting.</p>
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<p>As long as there is sufficient reason and evidence to believe so, you mean. I find the fact that there can be multiple, legitimate, interpretations of the same thing to be very indulging.</p>
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<p>I would think that knowing what kind of person a character is - the character’s history and motives and viewpoints - would be very important to understanding a story. I agree on that last question, that involves comprehension and is hardly the type of analyzing I was talking about. We’re not in the 7th grade.</p>
<p>English classes are only useful in elementary, maybe middle school. It’s good to develop grammar and writing skills. That’s the part of English that I believe is important. What I think is completely useless is the literature part. I don’t like how English classes force students to analyze literature. People have completely different perspectives on literature. There isn’t always a set meaning behind literature, it could be multiple meanings. As they say, students are forced to analyze concepts far more than the author intended to have.</p>
<p>Literature is something that is created by man but only for the use of entertainment. I think it’s ■■■■■■■■ how they even offer degrees for literature. It’s completely useless. For example, when is Shakespeare going to help me later in life? I’m not saying that Shakespeare is bad, but it should be left for people who are interested in interpreting it.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the aspect of English that is grammar in writing should be taught because it enhances our abilities in interpretation and communication but literature should be left as an elective.</p>
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You may find The Scarlet Letter interesting, but I certainly don’t.</p>
<p>I think there is value to English precisely because it is subjective, utterly lacking in useful content, and plagued by arbitrary rules. Those are three of the most defining characteristics of life. Maybe Nat Hawthorne really meant every word he wrote in its most literal sense, but it shouldn’t take you long to figure out that your English teacher wants to hear about symbolism and allegory. Instead of whining about how terrible it is that the system can be gamed, start gaming it yourself. Life isn’t always filled with reasonable or useful tasks. Learn how to deal with the inane and pointless and move on.</p>
<p>^ ^that’s exactly what I mean when I say typical critics are odious. Most celebrated authors find critics odious. One writes books to convey emotions or ideas to readers. You can’t say this book is worse than that one like this theorem is simpler than that one. Critics abuse some seemingly average authors and their works. And if we go on analyzing and arguing with each other due to different perspectives on some works or other, we’ll be critics sooner or later. And that’s the tragic part of current English courses in high schools as well as colleges. I would rather take the traditional English course-learn two dead languages, Latin and Greek, and then grammar, rhetoric and all that (assuming my impressions of traditional English study being concentrated on language learning and reading is right.)</p>
<p>Why did the author write this book?
to show tha- no.
to convey the idea that w-… no.
to support himself financially? yeah
but seriously, I don’t think there’s a real significant benefit of being able to identify the meaning of the frozen ducks in Catcher in the Rye. Don’t think it helps us at all to play “literary i-spy”. “I spy an allegory. congratulations?”
I think the purpose of english should be to improve our own writing, and I’m hoping that AP Lang will do that. I’m already a good writer but I know lots of people who aren’t and would benefit much more from becoming a more eloquent writer rather than becoming a master at literary i-spy.</p>
<p>Except writing isn’t only for technical purposes. People use it as a creative medium, a way to showcase not only their talents but their ideas and opinions as well. If George Orwell decides to write a story about animals on a farm, do you think it will detail the feeding habits and cleaning regiments of a group of farm animals? Or, more likely, you would learn that this little story is actually a dystopian allegorical novella that addresses issues of corruption, ignorance, and greed by a revolution’s leaders, among others. Sure an essay about the same subject matter might be adequate at describing your grievances, but essays aren’t a very good way of reaching a large crowd.</p>
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<p>How about “yes” to all of the above. Literature isn’t meaningless crap put out there to just put food on the author’s plate.</p>
<p>If you don’t know the answer to this question inside, you’ve missed the point of literature. Move on and don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>I could care less about biology but I don’t question its purpose.</p>
<p>Yeah, but not everybody is going to be writing a book, much less one that has a significant political/social message. Many of us are probably going to be writing something more like an e-mail to your boss, prospective partner or something.
And the problem with English (our curriculum, at least) is that beyond identifying allegories and literary devices and analyzing them, we don’t do much else. I haven’t ever written an allegory in my english class, although I probably could. I agree with you about creative writing, it seems that instead of actually doing it for ourselves we compose expository essays with 2 concrete details and 2 commentary. bleh. </p>
<p>^^ I can defend the authors of well written, profound, purposeful novels. Twilight series? not so much.</p>
<p>Literature is art, and the purpose of art is to permit the discovery of one’s self. Writing papers on allegories and conceits does not prepare you to undergo literary analysis of a memo at work, it is to permit you to understand the artistic process as far as writing as concerned so that you can better understand your world, because writing is simply a permanent communication of one’s thoughts, and the perspective of one person can help make that of another more complete.</p>
<p>^ I don’t get these feelings. =)</p>
<p>For someone like me, who has and prefers a logical mind, (fictional) literature means little. If I were to read, I’d rather read nonfiction for practical purposes.</p>
<p>I guess it’s a personal thing, but it definitely shouldn’t be completely discounted. Personally, I’ve learned more valuable things from books like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Paradise Lost than I could ever learn from a textbook</p>
<p>I disagree. Just judging from the name of those books, I’d rather read an informative textbook.</p>
<p>I have a quote from Paradise Lost on my Facebook profile</p>
<p>Me too! :O</p>
<p>omg now I have to friend you just so I can see it ♵_♵</p>
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<p>Thar she blows</p>
<p>lol quite the juxtaposition</p>
<p>Actually, I’d also rather read a technical book over most works of literature (not a textbook though, that’s kind of pushing it). In fact, of the three books I’m reading in front of me, two involve theoretical physics and space travel and the other a generic book about risk and wealth. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the artistic endeavors or discover the nature of the human condition found in many pieces of fictional writing. In fact, this to me is the most important reason for studying literature. A good book will describes the nature of the human condition, and that I think is important enough.</p>