English is not my first language. So I’ve been always wondering about English classes in American schools. Are they dedicated to perfecting grammar, or expanding vocabulary, or the history of the language?
A typical English class in American schools for me (what I’ve seen in the movies) is when a teacher sits in the middle of the room reading some book and kids are just sleeping not giving a crap about her/him. How true is that?
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The portrayal of schools in film is typically a very exaggerated version of true life, and while there may be some students who don’t follow the lesson, the image of a class room full of bored sleeping students is a bit facetious. English classes in early grades are typically both grammar, as well as literature, but in higher education English classes can be split into composition (writing and grammar) or literature (studying books, and lit), and they focus more clearly on that facet of education.
> perfecting grammar, or expanding vocabulary
Yes.
>the history of the language
They don’t really cover etymology. How the English language has changed might come up if the class is studying Shakespeare or Chaucer.
English class is really a literature class. You read books/classic literature, write essays on the books, and learn how to improve your writing.
Movies aren’t documentaries. What you’re seeing in film is an establishing shot to demonstrate to the viewer any number of things (i.e. that this particular class is misbehaving, that this is taking place in a bad school, or maybe just that the teacher is boring if it’s from the perspective of a student).
In reality, early education is focused on grammar, spelling, vocabulary, sentence structure, etc. Then it becomes a mix of these things along with studying and analyzing literature. Sometimes there’s creative writing involved.
It’s usually a combination of reading, writing, and grammar. Grammar education has been somewhat deemphasized for the past few decades, but is still done to some extent.
High school English tends to be based around literary works. It’s common to read a few novels and plays throughout the year and to build units around those. There is usually also some poetry and some non-fiction in the mix. Students usually do most of their writing about the literature, but there are sometimes other topics (like resume writing or speech writing.)
Reading to the students is usually something of a last resort. Ideally the students are reading. But for a movie or TV scene having the teacher reading out of a famous work of literature portrays easily that it is English class. As for students being bored and asleep, I think that it’s exaggerated but it certainly happens. English is a subject where the immediate applicability to careers is not obvious to students. So some students do consider it a boring or pointless subject. On the other hand some students love it and find reading and discussing literature to be the most interesting thing about school. So it does vary.
Edit to add: the “history of the language” stuff is very spotty. I go over a lot of that because I find it interesting, but it’s very possible to get through high school without ever learning much about the origins of English. It’s not really a highly standardized part of the curriculum.
Early English education focuses on grammar and spelling. Teaching children to read, write, and construct sentences.
After that lessons focus on reading comprehension and longer form writing, learning how to write a story or a persuasive essay to construct a cohesive narrative or a logical argument.
You also have a fair amount of literature learning, which is closer to the cliche movie scene you’re describing. Reading and analyzing texts.
By the time you’re in high school (ages 14-18) an English class coursework might be something like “Read chapters 1-10 of [Book], then write a 2 page paper summarizing the events and 1 page on whether you think [Character] was or was not justified in doing [action].”
Grammar and vocabulary and reading comprehension is the priority at lower grades. As students get older/more advanced a greater emphasis is placed on writing essays and analyzing literature. The difficulty of the literature will increase with age and ability, as well as the expected quality of work for essays.
And unfortunately, English class is where you see most of the drama about teachers trying to impose their political views on the students.
I genuinely wonder sometimes if older people in other countries aren’t teaching their kids that not everything they see in movies is real.
It’s usually a combination of grammar and literature. In early grades it’s mostly grammar, spelling, and reading comprehension. As you go up in grade level grammar shifts to more serious academic writing and identifying the themes of literature. At least that’s what my experience was, it’s going to be different depending on where you go to school.
English class, from about age 6 years old to around 12 years, is primarily dominated with vocabulary and grammar. However, once you have entered high school around 14 years old, it shifts to be more about the ability to read and understand literature and to practice essay writing. At the very least that’s how I and most people I know experienced it.
In primary schools, you’re learning how to write, but after that, it’s mostly a literature class. Classes are mostly book reports. At my high school, we would have a weekly vocabulary workbook assignment, a couple chapters a week of some book, and in-class discussions on other literature.
I don’t think we covered any grammar at all between grades 8-11. Granted, I was in honors classes, so it’s possible the less advanced courses focused more on it.
As for the stereotype of a teacher reading a book to an apathetic class, if you read ahead in a book there was little value to paying attention to the in-class readings unless it was a specific excerpt that would be discussed. The ironic part is that these distracted students are the *most* engaged in the material, while in film, it’s because they feel disengaged.
In early grades it focuses on grammar, vocab, and spelling and such.
In later grades like high school, it’s more about literature analysis, writing skills, reading comprehension, etc. Most of my high school English classes were spent, reading, analyzing and writing about some piece of literature, or on practicing different styles of writing (i.e. essays vs creative writing).
English was my favorite class in high school, but I was a nerd who liked (and still likes) classic literature and creative writing.
This is confusing to foreigners, but remember that we are a nation of immigrants with no official language.
We have a curriculum that starts with basic literacy in early childhood and gradually becomes more focused on the study of literature and composition (but still involves practical stuff like formatting a formal/business letter as late as high school), that is called “English.”
Imagine a school where children arrive at different ages with different levels of competency in the *de facto* native language, from fluent to zero comprehension, fresh off the boat from Italy or Germany or somewhere in Latin America, or somewhere that doesn’t even use the Latin alphabet, like Russia or China.
That’s how schools *in urban areas* have been pretty much throughout our history. In rural parts, not so much. But the educational institutions for training teachers and developing curricula had to accommodate that.
Before specialized classes for new learners of English, this part of the school day did double duty, advancing literacy and language skills of native speakers and helping non-native speakers to learn English.
So, we just called it “English” to save confusion. At least, that’s my best guess, and I’ve never heard a more satisfactory explanation for why we call it that.
i remember sitting in freshman yeah english class and we learned that good, better and best are three words associated with each other and one is ‘stronger’ than the previous. so if you want to say something is ‘more good’ than you say that its better and if oyu want to say something is ‘more better’ than you say that its best.
another thing i remember was learning about the order in which we described things. like why we say ‘the big, yellow wagon’ instead of ‘the yellow, big wagon’.
all of this kind of funnels into more intelligent lessons on writing for essays and reports.
its kind of insane all these rules we verbally follow but never really explained so explicitly until you take an american english class.
we also learned latin suffixes and prefixes to help us with our SAT prep. that has helped me even to this day
>Are they dedicated to perfecting grammar, or expanding vocabulary, or the history of the language?
It depended on the year for me. In my regular 9th and 10th grade english classes that where required, they mostly focused on grammar and vocabulary, with some looks at various pieces of literature. After that the classes became more specific, although I only remember the one I took on the history of American English.
Younger kids study some literature, but mostly it’s a lot of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, writing, things like that – the stuff children need to master a language. Then the further you get in secondary school it’s more literature (prose and poetry) and writing. In university it’s basically all literature and essay writing about what you have read.
It’s been 30 years since I was in high school, but my English classes at that level were a combination of grammar (we had textbooks for that), vocabulary, and spelling, various kinds of writing exercises including essays, stories, technical descriptions, poetry, etc., and also reading and analyzing different styles of literature and significant pieces of writing.
In lower class levels it was basically the same things, just simpler.
We didn’t necessarily study the history of the language in detail, but we did spend some time on learning about prefixes, roots, and suffixes, and how they came from different languages, and that you can often deduce the meanings of many complex words by understanding the parts they are assembled from.
It’s mostly literature and plays, reading is usually part of the homework, the teacher rarely read us the books. If we were reading a play (Romeo and Juliet for example) we often read in class with each student reading a certain character’s lines (often in character if we wanted to, which was fun). We focused a lot on things like literary devices (similes, metaphor, symbolism, synecdoche, etc.) and wrote papers analyzing or critiquing the works, or connecting them to real life or historical events.
We also started our classes with quizzes and drills on grammar and other elements tested on the SAT reading and writing sections.
Mostly grammar and spelling. Some years you’ll have American Literature or English Literature, so you’ll get to read a fair bit of Shakespeare and Mark Twain, among others.
Just the useless information in books
In primary school it is grammar and vocabulary, Reading (as it was called when I went to school) was a separate literature based class. The two are merged over the years and by middle school English was really just Literature and learning to analyze and write reports. High school English (Academic track) was geared toward learning to research and write longer form academic work.
You can reduce English class through understanding a simple assignment/request…
“Good. Now rewrite it using fewer words but don’t lose *any* of the meaning.” *ad infinum*
Generally grammar/vocabulary stops being taught right around middle school.
English in middle in high school is primarily a literature class, with homework mostly being essays that are graded. The goal would mostly be to make the students competent readers and writers
> what I’ve seen in the movies
> How true is that?
What you see in the movies is usually so exaggerated and dramatized as to be divorced from reality.
I’d suggest looking at course descriptions for English classes at American schools. Here’s an example list from a state university:
>A ENG 100Z Introduction to Analytical Writing (3)
>
>Introduction to the skills necessary for clear, effective communication of ideas through careful attention to the writing process, critical analysis, and argumentation. The course emphasizes a variety of rhetorical practices.
​
>A ENG 102Z Introduction to Creative Writing (3)
>
>Introductory course in creative writing. Practice in the writing of multiple genres and forms, such as poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, drama, and other literary forms.
​
>A ENG 311 History of the English Language (3)
>
>A broad tracing of the history, development, and structure of the language from the beginnings to modern English, including foreign influences on English, basic tendencies of the language, grammatical constructs, and regional usages, especially American. Intended primarily for juniors and seniors.
​
>A ENG 342 Study of an Author or Authors Before Mid-18th Century (3)
>
>Examination of a single major author in depth (e.g., Chaucer or Milton), or of two or more authors whose works illuminate each other in terms of style, theme, and/or relationship to a particular historical era. May be repeated once for credit when content varies.
​
>A ENG 460/460Y Topics in Transnational Studies (3)
>
>Focused examination of transnational literature and cultures. Individual semesters may focus on, among other areas: particular aesthetic movement(s), cultural text(s), political question(s), or historical problem(s) of post-colonial nations and subjects in their transnational contexts.
([full list](https://www.albany.edu/undergraduate_bulletin/a_eng.html))
English class before university is basically baby-steps this + grammar.
It’s grammar, writing, and reading literature. The books you read aren’t necessarily English-language novels. Like we read a *lot* of Russian literature in my high school English classes. Typical assignments include vocabulary tests and writing expository essays about books you read.
I was in high school in the 70s, and we covered grammar, composition, and literature in our English classes. At the lower grade levels, it was more grammar/composition with some literature. At the higher grade levels, junior/senior years, there was more emphasis on the literature, which if I recall was American lit one year and English lit the other. We had these huge Norton Anthologies that contained short stories and poetry from a broad time range. I loved reading and discovered some of my favorite authors when reading those stories in high school.
From my experience, it’s a mix of everything. Early on, it’s ABCs and spelling, vocabulary. Then, a little later, some grammar. I recall in maybe 2nd or 3rd grade, we read The Hobbit together as a class, where we would take turns reading aloud, and we would learn new words and discuss the story, so that was mix of lots of skills including reading and reading comprehension. I remember having lots of books assigned for reading, like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, where we would have to write essays related to the books in addition to learning about concepts like themes, metaphors, etc.
I remember segments on poetry and learning different types and having to write your own in different styles. I think vocabulary was often a common thread, where whatever we were reading, there was an accompanying word list.
What else? I think there was a little bit of etymology, about the origins of words and language evolution. I remember a lesson about how it used to be “dove” but now it’s more and more “dived.” Also when we read Shakespeare and Chaucer we learned about the evolution of English.
ETA I think at some point we had some kind of segment on journalism and that kind of reading and writing.
“An F in English? Bobby, you speak English!”
Actual English teacher here. I teach based on literature, composition, vocab, structure, rhetoric, and mechanics. I assign a lot of writing homework and watch their writing become better. I only teach American lit but if I had world lit, I’d be teaching Dante’s Inferno (*The Divine Comedy*), a little Tolstoy, maybe some Mulan Kundera. It’s about learning argument, clarity of thought, empathy, and also making sure these damn kids stay off their damn phones for like an hour.
First, in American schools “English” is short for “English Language Arts” aka ELA.
What ELA entails according to common core standards:
*Reading comprehension (Narratives, Argumentative/Persuasive, and Informative Literature)
*Writing/composition (Narratives, Argumentative/Persuasive, and Informative writing)
*Writing Conventions (Grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, etc)
*Speaking and Listening (ranging from Academic conversation to public speaking)
This is what is suppose to be taught over the course of a K-12 education.
I’m an English teacher.
No, the teacher doesn’t sit in the middle of the room reading a book and the kids are sleeping. That’s a movie trope.
We teach literature/poetry, reading skills (like finding the main idea or supporting details in a nonfiction text-it’s called “close reading”), and essay and fiction writing.
Yes, everything that you wrote is true.
😂😂Edit: sp and grammar
It basically becomes literature study when you’re older but it starts with a lot of grammar, gotta teach the kiddos that standardized formal stuff there cuz they sure aint gonna pick it up at home
How to create introductory paragraphs. Different techniques for expressing yourself in writing: similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, alliteration, hyperbole, not name some. Tone vs mood. The use of foreshadowing. How to cite sources.
But when I was a student, there seemed to be endless lessons on parsing a sentence.