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 Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:35 pm
So tonight I finished writing my rough copy of my essay for my English class, comparing the characters Charles Morse (from the movie The Edge), and Sanger Rainsford (from The Most Dangerous Game by Ray Bradbury). It is, in fact my first real essay; not that I haven't written others, but it's my first time writing an essay in a specific format. I'd written two essays before, one on the Death Penalty (I got horrible marks on that one, mostly because I was stating my opinion), and one on another film (some film about Aboriginals in South America). The problem was that I didn't know how to go about writing a formal piece of work. Now I understand that we're not allowed to use contractions, the words 'I', 'me', 'you', 'we', ectera, and we cannot state our opinions. My teacher gave me no less than 10 handouts on how to write a solid essay. I've never used a thesaurus so much in my entire life.
On the other hand, writing short stories is a breeze for me. My LA teacher told us to write a short story on the subject of 'The carebears need your help!'. xD I can pull a story out of my butt, no problem. It's simple and fun for me, so I definately prefer fictional writing to formal writing.
So here is my discussion topic: Are you better with formal writing, such as essays or letters, or are you more comfortable with fictional writing, like stories?
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:46 pm
After about 4 years of University I think I can safely say I have written over 70 essays in about that time.. My expertise seems to be formal essays. Your teacher is misinformed about formal essays or you are not following instructions properly.. a formal essay CAN contain your opinion, you are just expected to support your opinion with the opinions of established scholars in the area of your debate, OR evidence from what you are writing about that supports your debate.
I love essays.. and sometimes I even think of some really stellar topics.. I never get around to writing them tho.
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:19 am
I called her on the phone and she touched herself... There's more than one type of formal essay. Some are opinion based and some are strictly based off of facts you found through research. I suck at writing. English was one of the hardest classes for me, it literally stressed me out so badly. I think I'm better at formal writing though. I can't do poetry or write a story to save my life. There's also informal essays and those are just weird, because you get SO used to it being formal and having all these rules ingrained into your head it becomes SO hard to let go of them for that piece. That always drove me crazy. ...I laughed myself to sleep.
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:13 pm
Last year I must have written at least 50 essays.
Thankfully this year my teachers give less work.
I use contractions all the time.
I always forget to take them out.
But I'd have to say I'm the best at formal essays.
My narrative writing skills suck.
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:54 pm
No opinion in an essay? Lol! Essays are full of opinions. What stance you take with facts makes an opinion.
College essays are somewhat different from high school essays in my experience because I can use I, we, us, etc. I do not use you, and I avoid contractions unless they're in "" =3
I can do both, but, I like having less restrictions. Makes for way more fun.
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:48 pm
Well I guess what my teacher means by opinion is saying something along the lines of "I think that so and so.." I dunno. Either way, its a pain in the a** to write.
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:45 am
Formal writing is way easier for me. I like doing it aswell. In essays, the information you use is in front of you most of the time.
English is usually easy for me. I get Bs and As.
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:51 pm
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 11:25 pm
I can't write anything good unless it's a love story sad
BUT! I'm gonna try to make a murder mystery for this guild <3
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Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 2:27 pm
I would stand in line for this
I`m actually pretty good with both. I can completely pull a decent formal essay out of my a** in less than thirty minutes.
Trust me, I`ve done it probably about twenty times in the last three years. Several of them, my teacher and|or professor in which ever class were impressed and used it as an example. I don`t typically like doing research papers though. We did one. . . last semester? in my government and politics class on committees in Congress and I loathed it. I reread it after I`d typed it up and all I could do was be like "this is so craptasmical it`s not even funny." Maybe it was just because of all the listings we had to include such as the members, the jurisdictions of the committee and subcommittees, etc.
I just so happened to get the Senate Committee on the Judiciary; the damned thing has jurisdiction over every ******** thing in the world. It ranges from holidays to patents to federal penitentiaries to the Constitution.
It was about six pages of crap with about maybe 20 sentences because of all the listed items.
Apparently, I have a very unique writing voice as well, since I usually write how I speak.
On the other hand, I do like writing fan fiction and original stories, I just don`t ever have the will or the time to keep a long ongoing story up. I prefer to do one-shots or things with very few chapters.
Ah, and I don`t use contractions in my formal essays, though I do use them in fan fiction and things that are just for fun or are meant to read in a colloquial manner.
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Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:26 pm
I don't consider myself very good at writing but I think my formal writing is better than my story writing.
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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:16 am
^_^ i just finished an English essay.....and i used formal writing, since the teacher prefered us to use uhm high standardized writing?? i dont know what it's called...XD but mostly formal writing^^
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:31 pm
I agree with you....writing informally is sooooooo much easier....because it's ur opinion and not wat the teacher told you to think and also everything can be straightforward instead of hidden behind symbolism, foreshadowing, parodies....etc...blah blah...it's just funner. biggrin xd 3nodding
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