From Silence to Words

In my high school, whenever we were assigned to write an essay, it was never an open topic. The teacher would explain her interpretation of a text, and it was then our responsibility to write an essay based on her/his interpretation(s). My experience is similar to Lu’s experience in school, because she also did not feel free to express her own feelings and opinions in her writings. Up in till my senior year of high school, I had learned that writing an essay was based on the five paragraph structure. Each paragraph had to be put together in a certain way, and did not leave much room for creativity. Yet once my essay was set up and composed of five paragraphs and much of my teachers opinions, it was time for students to switch papers with other students. Although it seems like a good idea, the only thing I ever remember getting out of peer critic was the last gossip. Most of the time I would just switch papers with a close friends, then we would both glance at each other’s papers, and agree that each other’s was “good”. Then we would proceed to talk about, what seemed at the time, more important conversation. I believe that some of these practices have limited my writing creativity.