KingOfActing
lukewarm mess
I love English as proper subject. I love all the books we've done so far in the past three years (Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, Heart of Darkness), except for Motorcycle Diaries (god that one is a bore). I love Shakespeare. I love the idea of truly analysing most of these really, really well written, interesting works. But I loath the very way in which we are taught to "analyse". The essays that get full marks in English HSC aren't well written essays, the majority of the time. They're just the syllabus cleverly reworded with some big words thrown in to make it look fancy. I absolutely hate having to memorise quotes, the exams should allow us to bring our texts with us, in my opinion.
In English we are taught to "make up" techniques, come to our own conclusions, then state them as facts in our essays, using a somewhat-related quote as "evidence". We are told that saying something like "The author's use of [...] creates [...]" is the correct way to say "The author's use of [...] can create [...]", which has a completely different meaning. If you contrast English essays to music essays, you'll understand what I mean. In music, we are taught to simply state cleary that which is a fact, and not make up anything related to "intentions of the composer". If a melodic line is angular, you state that it is. You don't go on to say how "the angular melody is a symbol through which Stravinsky expresses his erratic thought process to the listener". Just because that is your interpretation of the text, you cannot state it as if it is fact.
The short answer sections are usually fine. The creative sections are definitely fine. The speeches (internal, I don't know if every school does them) are good too. But the essays are simply false. Honestly, I'd be more okay with them if we were told to write a "persuasive response" rather than being told to "analyse" because what we are expected to do, isn't truly analysing, it's fallacious argument.
//end rant
