Composition

I believe I have always had a natural comprehension of English. My various English teachers would present topics that I would immediately grasp. I knew most of the rules and reasons behind English, but after a while, I would forget why but simply know the correct answers. In high school, I could write papers the day before they were due and still earn A’s. In fact, that is precisely what I did. I found that procrastinating forced me to come up with far reaching ideas that my teachers found brilliant. But to tell the truth, I really never found my English classes too challenging. I went to both private and public school, and the English department never pushed me to challenging levels until I went into AP Literature. There were some aspects in AP that challenged me, but we were taught to write five paragraph essays because of the time constraint. The hardest part of that was finding a good thesis. I never had trouble with the thesis in other classes because we were always told what to write, but in AP it was always hard.

Another lesson came with the ACT’s. I expected to do poorly in math, but I did not expect that my English section would be as low as it was. My English score was not particularly low, but for me, I had higher expectations. I took the ACT’s a total of three times like my counselor had advised. I studied for math and English. In the ACT book, I found that a lot of the grammar rules were different than what I was taught. I tried to remember all the variations, and I did much better by my final ACT score. But, that was mainly grammar and spelling.

Before college, I had been taught the five paragraph essay. My AP classes stressed this format, and I was pretty good at it. Once I came up with my thesis and outline, I could whip those five paragraphs with similes, metaphors and quotes.

Once I was in college, the story changed. My composition class taught me to reject the five paragraphs. I learned that I do not have to make my first sentence the thesis. Also, I found that I could express my main idea through connecting different examples into one main thought. I like to think of that principle as the Malcolm Gladwell principle. I am sure that Gladwell did not come up with that format, but he does a great job at presenting an idea through two or more similar examples. Also, my composition professor was encouraging me to write my paper on one of Gladwell’s essays in that style.

I still do not know some grammar rules. I do not know all the different comma or colon rules, and I do not know where a period goes with quotation marks (I swear that rule continually changes). And, I still have problems with starting papers making a thesis. I know I still have a lot of learning to do because there are many concepts I feel need more of my attention, but at least I was able to get out of my narrow mindset and expand my writing to a more mature level because of my college composition professor.