My Title is so dramatic and intense, when I wrote it, I could hear the scary sound effects! Here is a mystery for you. What do you call seven rules that you must NEVER break? Rules that are said to condemn you to hell? Rules that are govern only by Evil doers? Guessed it yet? Those unbreakable rules are called the Seven Deadly Sins... of Literature, of course. If you want to succeed in a AP English class or any college level class of English you must NEVER do the following:
1. Never Empty Write
2. Write Overused Clichés
3.Use Too MANY PLATITUDES.
4. Write Obvious Facts
5. Generalizing Too Much
6.Have Dogmatism In Any Form
7. USE BIG WORDS FOR NO REASON.
All of this rules are going to take some time getting used to. I sometimes forget some of them but who doesn't. Today, my class was sent an email with an article titled AP English Blather by Tina Blue. I was a little overwhelmed by it. The article talked about how freshmans in college are stunned when they receive their first F on an essay when most of them are used to getting A's simply because they don't know how to write properly. In High School, one is taught certain writing patterns; you must do this, do that, have 5 paragraphs; but in college teachers have a lot more flexibility and room to choose what type of writing they want you to complete. Now this is a scary thing if you are always used to 5 paragraphs essays and then suddenly your college teachers asks for a I-Search paper of 50 pages. A common problem Tina finds is the level of difficulty students have breaking those habits learned in High School. She gives the picture that English is broad and open to many views and opinions so a student must never conformed with one right answer but with ambiguity. English is a spectrum of possibilities.
What to take away?
I must try not to break any of the Seven Deadly Sins of Literature.
Jose.
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