What English class should really teach you in Off Topic

ID:42083
 
Apr 24 2008, 9:52 pm (Edited on Apr 24 2008, 10:44 pm)
This following information may be very boring for some and other may consider it useless. But if you study each bit of information you'll realize this information is necessary to write a good paper for any English class. I only wish they would have taught students this back when they were young, around middle school (6-8 grade). Hopefully I will get some decent feedback from knowledgeable members who may even give me some more information.

I will first like to define some very important terms that may or may not deal with the rhetoric triangle.
Rhetoric: The art of presenting content.
Exigence: Authors reaction to a situation that motivates him/her to write.
Purpose: To warn, reveal human society, enlighten, to correct.
Sentence: A group of words that name something and make a assertion (claim).
Clauses: In laymen's term, the basic building blocks of a sentence.
Syllogism: Logical equation.
--example:
All men (A) are (=) mortal (B)
Socrates(C) is (=) a man (A)
Socrates(C) is (=) mortal (B)
--
Enthymeme: Reduced syllogism.


The following information are 16 Inventions I've learned, I won't bother writing down their definitions unless someone is interested.
Existence
Degree
Spatial
Time
Motion
Form
Definition
Potency
Desirability
Feasibility
Causality
Correlation
Genus - Species
Similarity
Possibility

Now for some basic yet even more important information.
ARGUMENT = CLAIM + SUPPORT
This must be the most important equation I know.

Toulmin Model is used for analyzing a piece of work.
The following terms deal with this model.

Data = facts, stats, studies, expert opinion
Warrant = unspoken assumption
Backing = spoken data
Rebuttal = stating the counter argument
Qualifiers = data that focuses on the claim(s)

There are several sentence patterns what we discussed during class. If you need any sentence example please ask.
SC; SV.
SV; ConJ.ADV SV.
SV, ConJ. SV; SV or SV, SV, ConJ. SV.
SVO; S, O
SV:SV
S - Modifier - V
S - full sentence - V
Participial Phrase, SV. Or SV, Participial Phrase
A, B, C
A and B and C
(The "and" can be replaced with one of the f.a.n.b.o.y)
F - for
A - and
N - nor
B - but
O - or
Y - yet

Also before this class I never exactly understood a semi-colon was. The instructor gave me a great example:
.Period
,Comma
(Percom)
-Suggest "relationship" between ideas
-One core idea connected to next
Quote from instructor, "When I rule the earth, I’ll win a Nobel Prize for renaming the semi-colon to a percom."

This is basically a quick summary of what I've learned within a couple of weeks. Though I did not add everything as it would take too long and I’m missing notes, those pretty much the most important things someone would need to know.

Also remember, it's not the quantity of your paper, it's the quality. If you try to bull your way through a paper by adding huge terms you do understand just to reach the paper's required length you will most certainly fail. If you show you know what you're talking about but just missed the requirement then your instructor will most likely help you get an A. Unless you instructor is an idiot and only cares about length.

#1 Apr 25 2008, 8:27 am
I didn't learn how to properly write a paper until college. In school when I was younger I learned you start with an outline, then flesh that out, but outlines were always a hindrance to me until college. I didn't use them at first, because no one required them, but once I got comfortable with writing good papers I found that outlines helped me organize a bit. Before that, the outline got in my way because it always followed what I thought a good structure might be, without being based on knowing what material I actually had to use.

The most important thing I learned is that you have to start with the research. In my case I wrote a lot of essays based on a book or paper being discussed by the class, so the citations and stuff were mostly based on stuff we'd read. For big papers I had to actually get to the library and dig. The idea is, have in mind what you'll say as a thesis statement (the point of your essay), and find supporting--or conflicting--material worth discussing. Once you have your basic collection of quotes and such, building an outline is actually quite easy and only then is it useful.
#2 Apr 25 2008, 1:59 pm
I was never taught the correct way on how to research until now, which is unacceptable for my standards. College is a gigantic step in an individual's life; you want to go in prepared believing you can handle the situation with the current knowledge you've established from high school. But once you enter college you could be overwhelmed with the amount of research you will need to do.

Before this year if I had to research a topic I would have never gone to the library but I would have went on Google and probably headed to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is ok but it surely isn't a credible source, as with most of the sites on Google.

I was also never taught how to do peer revision. Before we would have given our paper to some random kid in class, they will read it, and then they would have to fill out a sheet that ask simple questions such as, how good was this paper? This stuff was useless, after the peer revision I would go back home with nothing to correct.

This year my instructor forces us to read our papers out loud to a partner. That partner can not interrupt the speaker but they can write things down on the second copy. Once done, the partner would tell the person all of the corrections that need to be made. The next day we would go to lab in which we'll rotate around each computer reading someone's paper. This has helped me out greatly.

The school curriculum needs to be changed now, students are not ready for college with the current knowledge they've been taught.