I’m mainly writing this based on my experiences with the year 12 vce system. Growing up I was terrible at English and probably still am, but according to the education system I was fairly decent at the time of my assessment, earning myself a solid 40. 40 to some is a very average score at best, but to me it is a satisfying accomplishment. I was never that amazing at being creative, but to receive an A from my teacher on my creative piece was really overwhelming for myself. Like any other skill that you don’t practice, it slowly digresses into this terrible and grammar filled mess which i hopefully can be able to call English.

This was an interesting read as it dives upon the true nature and purpose of the essay. An essay is the exploration of one’s thoughts, but as the writer states it is a polished and concise verseion of your original thoughts. This coincides with the with the definition we have grown to believe and understand in high school, we always start with an intro to provide an outline of our thesis and explain our 3 points. We then continue on to provide an elaborate detailing of our 3 contentions and finally we conclude it. The one thing that strikes me as interesting is the writers focus on how essays are not meant to be persuasive, maybe persuasive essays are (duh!??) but then why have we been conditioned into striving to make it so. The historical information of being lawyers, essays being for law school etc… it makes sense and in a way i like that in our modern day interpretation of the essay we have both expository and persuasive.

one thing i remember clearly from my English tutor was that she said ” Everyone has an opinion on everything, and if you say you don’t you’re an idiot” I think her quote sums up the extent to why we have been conditioned to be persuasive. We all have opinions, fair enough, but why did you come to this conclusion? Its one thing to believe in your own ideals, but to be able to convince the masses to see your point of view is a skill. I respected my english teacher, i always thought she was the smartest person i know.