My Experience with English Education
English has never been my favorite subject. In fact, it has always been my least favorite subject. Going through school, I often wondered why I needed to do so many English related tasks, and in wondering, I learned to detest the subject without realizing its future benefits. Why do I dislike English so much? Is it such a dreadful thing to learn? Isn't learning how to correctly write and interpret the English language important? Well, no and yes.
No, English is not a dreadful thing to learn. I suppose my dislike for the subject has become greater through the eighteen some years that I have been learning the different components of the English language. It wasn't actually learning how to speak English that bothered me, my dislike for English began to form when I began getting English education in a formal learning environment. That's when I remember elementary school. I don't recall disliking English then. It was more like I was learning new things - things that I did not learn at home or in pre-school - like reading, writing, and grammar. It felt good to finally know how to read and write (and I suppose it felt good to have knowledge of a little grammar too). These were things that once I learned them, I was using them everyday. Not only did I use the knowledge to read a story in reading class or to do a writing assignment, but to maybe read the newspaper and write a note to a friend as well.
However, then came junior high school. I believe this was when I began to really dislike English classes. Not only was I faced with the same long, boring
2
grammar assignments that I was exposed to in elementary school, but I also had to start reading long (or what I thought was long back then) books on topics that didn't really excite me. To top that off, I had the first of a long line of crazy (well, maybe they weren't crazy, but they sure seemed like it at the time) English teachers.
Why does it seem that most English teachers
No, English is not a dreadful thing to learn. I suppose my dislike for the subject has become greater through the eighteen some years that I have been learning the different components of the English language. It wasn't actually learning how to speak English that bothered me, my dislike for English began to form when I began getting English education in a formal learning environment. That's when I remember elementary school. I don't recall disliking English then. It was more like I was learning new things - things that I did not learn at home or in pre-school - like reading, writing, and grammar. It felt good to finally know how to read and write (and I suppose it felt good to have knowledge of a little grammar too). These were things that once I learned them, I was using them everyday. Not only did I use the knowledge to read a story in reading class or to do a writing assignment, but to maybe read the newspaper and write a note to a friend as well.
However, then came junior high school. I believe this was when I began to really dislike English classes. Not only was I faced with the same long, boring
2
grammar assignments that I was exposed to in elementary school, but I also had to start reading long (or what I thought was long back then) books on topics that didn't really excite me. To top that off, I had the first of a long line of crazy (well, maybe they weren't crazy, but they sure seemed like it at the time) English teachers.
Why does it seem that most English teachers