When you were taking English in high school, did you pick your own paper topics?...

[Nan in Mass]

I remember being told to write a this many paged paper for a book or a time period or for science, and then having to figure out what to write about, and I've done something similar with my own children. I was just wondering if that has changed, though, because my youngest says that people in his CC speech class seem to have trouble picking a topic when they are told they have to give a 5 minute informative speech. He said they are acting like they've never had to decide their own topic before.

 

Just curious...

-Nan

[memphispeg]

My dd is a jr. 1st year homeschooler. She just completely freaked when I suggested that she will need to find her own topics to write about for some of the books we are reading next semester in Am. Lit. Not done in PS!!!!!

[IsabelC]

Sometimes, sometimes not. But I think it's certainly a good idea that you're introducing it during the later home schooling years, as students are unlikely to get through college without having to formulate their own topics for papers.

[Teachin'Mine]

Yes in high school we usually chose our topic. I don't think there would be enough books at the high school and public library to support everyone in the grade being given the same topic. My dd has a research paper and the students choose their own topic.

 

ETA: The above was regarding research papers. Literary topics were usually assigned, or we had a few choices.

Edited November 8, 2010 by Teachin'Mine

[LatinTea]

Oh my, I can barely remember my English class back then! Of course, that was 35 years ago. :) If my memory does serves me right, papers were assigned. I would have written on Farenheit 451 or Brave New World. Those were the ONLY 2 books studied. Yikes. As you can see, not much to remember. I never wrote anything about science, but do want incorporate that into my dd's day. Maybe I can make her experience a bit more, um, complete.:glare:

Edited November 8, 2010 by LatinTea

[kokotg]

Well, owing to the fact that I am a giant dork, I happen to have my folder from 12th grade English right here. (I mean, I had to go down to the basement to get it, but I knew where it was). This was AP English, so most of our papers were supposed to be preparing us for the AP exam and, as such, had very specific topics. I don't have the actual assignments, only my papers, but it looks as if one assignment, for example, was to write about whether Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play about dignity or a play about despair. Another deals with the differences in tone between "To His Coy Mistress," "Loveliest of Trees," and "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time."

 

(incidentally, this reminds me of why my high school English teacher rocked and why I was so much better prepared for college than most kids).

 

I think that's really how it should be for most high school kids. Very few of them are able to choose a topic and come up with a good thesis without some direction (at least, very few of the freshman comp students I taught in grad school could do it. In fact, even when I pointed them toward a thesis like with the examples I gave, they generally couldn't do it).

 

In 11th grade, I remember, we had a year long project where we chose an American author, read books throughout the year, then wrote a 10-15 page paper in the spring. For that, we were on our own (I picked Jack Kerouac. Shudder).

Edited November 8, 2010 by kokotg
spelling. again. doh.

[Karen in CO]

I remember mine being a mix of assigned topics such as writing about literature the whole class had read, the bigger reports and essays that would be to write a xyz type paper about a book from the list or aparticular topic, and then the big research papers where we just had to get our topics approved.

[Brenda in FL]

I remember mine being a mix of assigned topics such as writing about literature the whole class had read, the bigger reports and essays that would be to write a xyz type paper about a book from the list or aparticular topic, and then the big research papers where we just had to get our topics approved.

 

This would be my experience as well. My lit essays were the most directed with lots of discussion in class which helped with the content. For larger term papers, science projects - we were more or less on our own for choosing topics.

 

I imagine the speech students are having a mental block that's mostly related to the stress of presenting their topic to the class. For speech classes - topics were not assigned only the type of speech.

[Kates]

For lit analysis essays, the topics were assigned - we'd just come into class and there would be a question on the board. 45 minutes later, we'd hand in our essays.

 

For research paper topics, we picked our own topics once we got to 11th grade. In 9th and 10th, the topics were assigned and the teachers walked us through the process...past that, we were responsible for our topics, our research, the whole process.

[creekland]

Wow, I can't remember my high school days much. I know in Microbio we had to pick our own topics, but I only remember that because a friend and I had to go to the local college library to research them. Google wasn't around back then.

 

I know in the school where I work now, shorter essays are assigned, longer papers are their choice though sometimes they have to choose from a list - esp for science or history.

 

English? I'm not sure either back then or now. I simply don't get to the English classes in our school (I'm rather exclusively a math/science sub).

[Kendall]

I can't remember from my days in school. I can tell you that my oldest is a freshman in college and he is really struggling with the Comp class. His biggest struggle is coming up with a thesis statement that the teacher finds worthy to write about. Once he has the topic he gets A's on his papers. All of the papers are based on a literature reading - usually a short story or play. So I feel I need to give my 11th grader practice on coming up with his own thesis, yet he really can't write an essay very well. So I guess I need to assign topics until the essay writing is down.

[angela in ohio]

We chose our own topics from within certain parameters: writing about a specific book, an essay about tragic heroes, a biography of a famous American, etc.

[Tree House Academy]

Most of the time, yes...but we had a range or list of topics from which to choose in high school. Now, in college, I was an english major and many times, other than the broad topic (like "write a persuasion paper"), we were given little guidance.