English Class Analysis

English classes have always been a required course in all of my years in school. As a student at Granada Hills Charter High School I have had the pleasure of having four different English teachers all with distinct teaching styles and assignments. It is in these classes that I have evolved as an English student, and discovered aspects about English that I do and do not enjoy. In my freshman year of high school I had a teacher who would begin each class by giving us fifteen to twenty minutes of individual silent reading. I really enjoyed this part of the class, because I like to read. However, in most other English classes that I had prior to this one reading felt like more of a chore and something I was forced to do. In this class I got to …show more content…
Some of the required readings were Romeo and Juliet, The Odyssey, and some poetry. In this class the way we went about reading the text was during class a volunteer or a chosen victim would read a couple of passages out loud and the teacher would aid in helping us understand what was going on and the analysis behind what we just read. When we were done with the readings we would usually have to write an essay on a topic about the text. The topics were for the most part chosen by the teacher. At the time I considered it a good thing because one of my weaknesses in writing is choosing a topic to write about. Once I decide on a topic the rest comes easy to me, getting started is the hardest part for me. One of the things I disliked about essays in that class was that if, I remember correctly every essay assigned in that class had the five-paragraph structure. I can see why the teacher liked the structure, because it required us to have quotes and evidence from the text followed by our analysis. It also made sure that we did not leave out a topic and concluding sentence. However, I felt like it limited our ideas, or forced us to put in something that really did serve much of a purpose in the essay just to fit the structure. Although I was not a fan of the …show more content…
Again we would read a couple passages, and then discuss them. When we finished reading our book we would again right an essay about it. The essays again were in the five paragraph structure; the difference with this teacher was that she gave us more freedom in the topics of our essays. In some cases we were able to choose our own topic, or if she chose it she would give us at least two topics to choose from. There were some assignments in this class that were different than my previous English class. One of the writing assignments that stuck out to me the most was a tribute speech we had to write about someone who has done something that has contributed to society. I wrote about President Obama’s speech about race in America. I thought this assignment was both fun and interesting because we got learn about someone else, and the assignment was unique. My sophomore year class was not too different from my freshman