FOR HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATES: What do you remember about high-school English?

It was actually a negative for the majority. A major distraction and imbued with romantic literature about the wrong things. If i am interpeting your sentiment correctly, I spent far far too much time with famous writers and not as much with math, foreign languages and politics, job and career counseling etc. Busing, bad food, and sports were a huge budget buster for local schools systems. Hell, it is worse today. They should have training in interpeting corrupt and wretched media like CNN and how it is organized and who are the decision makers. Useless, untimely and bs. Either become learn and master a trade or engineering, accounting, political science and career development. You must eat and somehow succeed. A little goes a long way regarding the luxury time wasters. Life is real and young people need intensive preparation and sports stars and movies stars are for a very small aggregate.

I remember playing spades in my sophomore English class because a group of us would read the books at home. Sad, huh? All four years would be good, and what someone else mentioned regarding writing papers is dead on. I had a research paper where for the first time I had to come up with a thesis and then back it up with sources to prove or disprove it instead of just telling about someone or something and reciting facts. I did have a lot of essays to complete, so thankfully I was well prepared for college (even after playing spades!) For wishing what might have been different - some more contemporary pieces being interspersed with the classics (I think there are more now than when I was in high school). What might work better, especially in the last few years, is literature class offerings with a specific focus - like science, social studies or art.

It was actually a negative for the majority. A major distraction and imbued with romantic literature about the wrong things. If i am interpeting your sentiment correctly, I spent far far too much time with famous writers and not as much with math, foreign languages and politics, job and career counseling etc. Busing, bad food, and sports were a huge budget buster for local schools systems. Hell, it is worse today. They should have training in interpeting corrupt and wretched media like CNN and how it is organized and who are the decision makers. Useless, untimely and bs. Either become learn and master a trade or engineering, accounting, political science and career development. You must eat and somehow succeed. A little goes a long way regarding the luxury time wasters. Life is real and young people need intensive preparation and sports stars and movies stars are for a very small aggregate.

Flirting with this cute boy, eating dry Honeycomb with a friend, the day we had a tsunami drill (Yes, I'm serious, and no, we don't live anywhere near an ocean), the day class elections were announced over the loud speaker and both candidates were in the class. The teacher stopping the Romeo & Juliet video and explaining why, we as freshman, should be mature enough to watch the following scene, which shows Juliet's "breasteses" and Romeo's "buttocks"! Being shocked by the lesbian scenes in "The Color Purple" (I was very niave) The father of Hester's (is that her name?) baby was the priest...

I wish we'd spent more time on Grammer!

I think the average American's technical proficiency with our language has really deteriorated in the last few years. I think part of this is because of computers (with spell checkers, though nobody uses them) and also partly because there are so many people in the US who speak English as a foreign language and it's not considered polite to constantly correct them, language skills have been de-emphasized.

They don't even teach English the way they did when I was a kid. We learned to diagram sentences (not in high school, in grade school)! In high school English we learned different writing styles, and we even did a unit on 'critical reading', like how to read advertising or political speech and decide whether or not it used facts or emotional arguments, etc.

In my high school English I was told that the better a grasp one has on spelling and syntax, the more money he would make, that there was a direct correlation between mastery of written English and life earnings. I took that to heart and learned to spell and to use punctuation properly. And all my life I've been the one in the office who proofread the boss's memos. HE couldn't spell or write clean sentences, but he had me to do that for him. 8^)

I do think English should be mandatory for all four years of high school. In fact, looking at some of the questions here on Yahoo Answers, I think four years might not be enough!

I wish the way to right essays was different. I mean it should be taught in details. I think English should be required all four years in high school because you will be required to write reports and other stuff in university.

Mostly, it was a waste of time. I actually learned more about English, from German class. While studying a foreign language, I learned much about proper English sentence structure. I think,a Literature class would have been more useful.

Grammar, grammar, grammar. Being able to speak properly by using good grammar has been an asset to me. Yes, English should be an integral part of each year of high school.

Grammer and spelling in order to have good communication skills used in everyday life.

Sara: definitely different ways to write essays and right essays.