4 ms·

We had those literature assignments as well. But in 12 years that happened a couple times most. Now don't get me started on literature writing assignment that a

by mantas 5y ago

We had those literature assignments as well. But in 12 years that happened a couple times most. Now don't get me started on literature writing assignment that are strongly advised to start in certain ways and it's best to just memorise the beginning off examples and just change few words....

filoleg 5y ago
Interesting to hear about an experience that's pretty much the same as mine, but rebalanced differently. For us, writing was the same way as yours ("strongly advised to start in certain ways and it's best to just memorise the beginning off examples and just change few words"), but it only happened a few times at most, and more towards the latter years, while reciting stuff in lit classes was the norm the entire time. And now I am starting to recall another type of assignments going until late middle school, where we had to write passages from textbooks in cursive in our "homework notebooks", mostly with small changes. Like "here is this 1000 word passage in the textbook written from the first perspective, rewrite it from the third perspective in pen". Made a typo? Well, restart, because while a couple of edits won't take much off your final score, any more than that makes a full restart a more worthy option (because it was required to use pen for those instead of a pencil; more diligent students who didn't wanna bet on getting it right on the first try, they did it first with a pencil and then traced it and erased the pencil). Another evening spent rewriting the same dull passage multiple times by hand in pen.
- mantas 5y ago
  On the other hand, how do teach someone handwriting skills? Writing down a passage is better than random blabery IMO. I'll take the must dull passage any day over several pages of synthetic exercises. For the record - my handwriting sucks.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    >On the other hand, how do teach someone handwriting skills? Writing down a passage is better than random blabery IMO I agree, however, doing it way past elementary school seems like a solid way of wasting time. When you are trying to learn writing or you are in elementary school, sure. But spending hours upon hours rewriting long passages multiple times due to random non-editable typos in late middle school felt mind-numbing and downright awful. And of course, as you progressed in grades, less attention of graders was focused on the actual handwriting quality, with passages getting longer and more convoluted, so the handwriting tended to degrade the further you got in your elementary/middle/high school education. Not even mentioning what happened to it after high school, because by then (unless your handwriting was completely unreadable) no one cared. And no, it didn't help in the long-term with handwriting at all. None of the adults tend to have textbook-good handwriting, it would barely even get a passing score in the best scenario (and that would be an exception). And just like in western countries, let's not even mention doctors' handwriting (but that's completely irrelevant to my point).

by mantas 5y ago

filoleg 5y ago

Interesting to hear about an experience that's pretty much the same as mine, but rebalanced differently. For us, writing was the same way as yours ("strongly advised to start in certain ways and it's best to just memorise the beginning off examples and just change few words"), but it only happened a few times at most, and more towards the latter years, while reciting stuff in lit classes was the norm the entire time. And now I am starting to recall another type of assignments going until late middle school, where we had to write passages from textbooks in cursive in our "homework notebooks", mostly with small changes. Like "here is this 1000 word passage in the textbook written from the first perspective, rewrite it from the third perspective in pen". Made a typo? Well, restart, because while a couple of edits won't take much off your final score, any more than that makes a full restart a more worthy option (because it was required to use pen for those instead of a pencil; more diligent students who didn't wanna bet on getting it right on the first try, they did it first with a pencil and then traced it and erased the pencil). Another evening spent rewriting the same dull passage multiple times by hand in pen.

mantas 5y ago
On the other hand, how do teach someone handwriting skills? Writing down a passage is better than random blabery IMO. I'll take the must dull passage any day over several pages of synthetic exercises. For the record - my handwriting sucks.
- filoleg 5y ago
  >On the other hand, how do teach someone handwriting skills? Writing down a passage is better than random blabery IMO I agree, however, doing it way past elementary school seems like a solid way of wasting time. When you are trying to learn writing or you are in elementary school, sure. But spending hours upon hours rewriting long passages multiple times due to random non-editable typos in late middle school felt mind-numbing and downright awful. And of course, as you progressed in grades, less attention of graders was focused on the actual handwriting quality, with passages getting longer and more convoluted, so the handwriting tended to degrade the further you got in your elementary/middle/high school education. Not even mentioning what happened to it after high school, because by then (unless your handwriting was completely unreadable) no one cared. And no, it didn't help in the long-term with handwriting at all. None of the adults tend to have textbook-good handwriting, it would barely even get a passing score in the best scenario (and that would be an exception). And just like in western countries, let's not even mention doctors' handwriting (but that's completely irrelevant to my point).