/lit/ - Literature

Everyone in my class read like a fucking robot. We were reading the Count of Monte Cristo and the class weren't doing justice for the story. I put a tiny bit of emotion into my reading, the teacher told me to calm down and the rest of the class always whispered "calm down [Anon]" every time it was my turn to read for the next 2 years.

>Really artsy black kid in English class
>Has a ton of racial pride
>Teahcer asks him about his policy on the n-word before we read some short story
>Says he doesn't care because it's just a word

I didn't expect that.

>>2167033
The only people bothered with the N word while reading are white kids and trash from the ghetto looking for a reason to flip out.

>>2167033

That duded is mah nigga.

>>2167030
I bet you were overacting like hell and rest of the class felt embarrassed by you.

>>2167033
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urxi2ZQoBB4

>>2167039
Not at all, I did the same reading but with a French accent.

>>2167042
An Afro-American woman who's talking out of place? what a shock!

>mid-level English class in undergrad
>reading list: Huck Finn
>professor: polite, ugly southern swpl lady
>first day of discussion
>when the professor asks us to quote passages everyone does exactly what OP described.
>when the professor reads a passage, she draws out "nigger" in a way that only a southern drawl can.
I respected that woman a lot more after that day.

I got to say nigger in school too!

>reading The Tempest
>kid raises his hand
>what spews from his mouth is-
>"these guys are speaking english, they aren't even from IT-A-LUH."
>ITALUH.
Teacher asks him if he was born a dumb ass or if it was something that developed later on.

>class reading
>most of them can barely read the text
>motherofgod

>>2167179
I am having trouble trying to pronounce IT-A-LUH
could upload an mp3 of your own pronunciation of it?

>>2167213
I assume anon meant [ɪtælʌ] or [ɪtælə]

>Reading sarcastic text
>I do not sound sarcastic at all
>teacher keeps telling me to sound sarcastic
>my part ends

/:
thats all i remember

>reading non-poetry aloud in class

niggers and overly pc people are the ones mainly perpetuating the belief that a word by itself is automatically offensive when they don't even consider the context.

fucking niggers ruin everything

>>2167212
>Student gets caught on the word "appearance"
>I hate life

>Reading Shakespeare in high school
>People can't read... Seriously, it felt like I was reading with dyslexics.
>They start filling in with their own words and ignoring teacher corrections
>Teacher has to stop after every 3 lines to translate what happened
>People can't analyze for shit

I know I'm not that great of a reader either. I didn't know people could be that... Stupid. I remember being so glad not a single one of them was in my creative writing's course.

>>2167232
ever read a play, bro?

>>2167264
God, don't even get me started on Shakespeare in high school.
>Romeo and Juliet
>no one in my class could read for shit, expect for me and a couple of other kids
>teacher has to correct punctuation every 2 or 3 words
>every single person forcing super shitty, unfunny british accents because "hurr durr Shakespeare was british"
>get tired of listening to it after the first day, go ahead and finish the play
>request to take the test right away
>teacher knows me and trusts that I won't give the answers out to everyone
>ace the test
>read whatever I want and tune out the rest of the class for the next 2 weeks as they struggle their way through the rest of the text

>reading caeser
>kids can't read for shit
>even THE FUCKING DYSLEXIC kid can read better than everyone else
>I just start picking up parts
>I was the only one to read at all during act 3
>ended with 23 roles read aloud

god damn teacher didn't even give a fuck every other act took a week to read we finished act 3 in an hour

>reading aloud in school
>90% of the class doesn't know what the fuck a period or comma is

Kid in my history class gets caught up on the words government, environment, and engagement. also pronounced army, "are-my".

He wasn't trolling. I laughed my ass off.

Also, another time we had to give a presentation of something or other in biology. The kid couldn't pronounce any of the words, so what he started doing was pointing to words on the slide and going "THIS....DIS....AND DIS (next slide) YEAH SO...DAT." I wish I wasn't so shitty at science in High School, because I hated being tracked with some people who are just shitty at everything.

>>2167240
that fucking feel, bro

>>2167295

Not that I want to imply anything, but you did end up in 4chan.

>>2167293

even better is people stopping at the end of every printed line as if there was a period at each

>7th grade
>reading aloud a story about a giril selling cookies or something
>she goes up to a car and knocks on the window
>story says, "the car's driver looked down in great surprise at what he took to be a midget assaulting his car"
>chuckle briefly but avoid making a fool of myself
>teacher starts laughing hysterically and talking about hilarious imagery
>nobody is laughing
>she becomes visually enraged and starts shouting, "WHY ARENT YOU LAUGHING? ITS FUNNY!"
>has some sort of mental breakdown and storms out of the room slamming the door behind her
>teacher's aid takes over and reads the story
>finish the story without the teacher
>she comes back a half an hour later and delivers a speech to the class about how stupid we are all and have no sense of humor whatsoever
>reads the line again and we all laugh tentatively
>starts reading from where she left off as if nothing ever happened

>3 months later
>teacher gets a new mic system or something to help the retards in the class pay attention
>its a headset of some sort
>after talking a bit, she goes to the bathroom
>accidentally leaves the mic on
>the sounds of groaning, a loud splash, and a sigh of relief echo over the speaker
>emotional scarring ensues

>mfw these are all truefax

>peer essay review everyone got 80/80
>get an essay
>look in terror only 10 sentences in pencil with terrible handwriting
>different is now spelled difent
>because spelled first becuuse then he "fixed" his mistake and spelled it becuase
>social soshal
>through thrugoh
>appearance aparonche
12th grade class 80/80 that fucking teacher didn't even grade the papers mean class paper length was around 10 pages

I was furious.

>assigned partners in spanish class
>notice that "rug" in spanish is misspelled on his vocab sheet
> :\
>notice that "rug" in english is spelled "rouge"
> o_o

>>2167310
>Bracing for emoticon shitstorm

>senior year
>teacher gives out like fifty guided reading questions every Monday
>never grades them once
>second to last week of school
>sees the sheet unfilled out under somebody's desk
>gets mad as fuck and starts yelling at the kid
>asks everybody to turn them in
>nobody did them
>gives everybody a 0/75 (tests were 100 points to give you an idea of what this means)
>yells at the class for the remainder of the class period and the next day
>he's foaming at the mouth angry and going off on unrelated tangents including personal attacks on people who try and defend themselves

I can't remember the name of the story, but it's about an upper level army guy talking about how some lower level guy in his employ and how that guy always seems to have good luck and averts every possible bad situation in his army career. When we talk about the story in class I ask my teacher, "Isn't the point of the story that the guy got where he was through hard work and his own merit, and that his superior just can't believe that this young guy actually knows what he's doing?" He says, "Haha, oh anon, you would make a good lawyer, you know that?"

I took a classical mythology class a few years ago.

>student pronounces "war" as "whar"
>prof asks, "sorry, what was that?"
>"whar"

>AP English 11
>Teacher is reading Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail out loud from a book of essays
>Many times in the letter, King wrote the word "Negro"
>Every time the word Negro appears, teacher replaces it with the words "African-American"

Shit.

>taking English classes

>>2167021
>junior year
>reading Huck Finn
>private school
>teacher is Black and chill
>spend class researching etymology of the word nigger
>learn what the original meaning was, meanings in Twain's time and why its offensive now
>encourages us to not be afraid to say it in class
>people say it while reading book aloud in class
>everyone's mature about it
>mfw its actually better to LEARN about controversial and questionable topics in society than HIDE from them and pretend they don't exist

>>2167351
>hometown is so bassackwards that the highschool didn't have mandatory English classes

>read Bananafish in 9th grade
>mfw

>>2167378

>year 11 lit class
>1 of 3 guys in the class of girls, female teacher
>other 2 guys are total faggots
>reading a book with the word "cunt" a lot
>we're australian
>read up to the word cunt
>reader just pauses and looks at the teacher
>teacher just looks at the student as if to continue
>awkward silence
>teacher begins at next sentance
>laugh inwardly
>i always say the text exactly as its depicted
>get complimented on my "confidence"

>Reading Romeo and Juliet in high school
>Everyone takes turns
>No problems, discuss Shakespeare afterwards
>mfw I didn't go to a shitty American high school

>read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in High School English class
>have to write an essay before we read it on the use of the word nigger
>allowed to use to word or not
>use it, along with wet back, kike, wop, and chink
>get A, average grade was C

pic related, a nearby restaurant used to have a burrito called the wet back.

>>2167304
>"WHY AREN'T YOU LAUGHING? ITS FUNNY!"
oh god
dat imagery

>we're assigned Lord of the Flies (shitty book)
>teacher uses the fact that it's set during some war to segue to the Hiroshima bombing
>decides to have an ethical debate in the class of kids who thought the Japs deserved it against those who thought it may have been bad
>ends up with me and two chicks on the "may have been bad" side
>all our redneck classmates keep going on and on about pearl fucking harbor

also
>English the year after that
>every time I raise my hand I get picked and then get to have the last word while calling all my classmates out on their shit and having everyone agree that I'm right

>freshman year
>teacher is reading Romeo and Juliet aloud in class
>part where Juliet is "dead" in the tomb
>girl in class is getting grossed out i guess
>she asks to go to the bathroom
>as soon as she stands up, she faints, landing flat on her face
>only one other student and I laughed
>we get glared at

and one more

>same class, reading To Kill a Mockingbird
>i get expelled from school
>never got to finish the story
>have to read Romeo and Juliet all over again with a bunch of dumb kids in night school

The worst part was that we had to watch the shitty Leonardo DiCaprio movie in night school instead of the one where you get to see Juliet's boobs.

>>2167464
It would've been so easy to defend the nuking without even mentioning pearl harbour.

>>2167470
>>2167464
also kind of dumb to have a discussion of allied war ethics that doesn't mention firebombings (reminder: japanese firebombings killed more civilians than both atomic blasts. not even counting dresden)

>one of the countries top 3 uni's
>20th c. avant garde module
>seminar on Dubliners
>before lecture arrives people start talking about the book
>everyone hated it
>why? 'cos nothing happens in any of the stories it's sooooooo boring'
>lecturer arrives and thus begins another hour and a half seminar of awkward silence and forced, retarded questions about nothing
>fast-forward a year and I'm reading a collection of short stories by said lecturer
>mfw there's a scene in which two profs discuss how fucking depressing seminars are because of the silences and lack of engagement

>>2167475
>countries
Yeah, this is why a university education doesn't count for shit, not the ridiculous fees and lack of job prospects, but this.

>>2167475
This has always bothered me. If you found seminar sessions boring because nobody participated and there was only silence, you were part of the problem.

All my seminars were full of silent scared kiddies. I just talked and contributed as best as I could.

I always ended up with the highest marks in my class. Two of my profs gave me departmental scholarships because they were so grateful for my caring about the material enough to read it twice and engage with it in discussion.

Saved me lots of money.

>>2167470
>>2167471
don't think I don't know that, I just picked that side because, in terms of ethics, of course it's fucking wrong to nuke thousands of living innocent people. I really can't give two shits about it, but obv. I wasn't going to choose the side that was teeming with fucktarded rednecks (aka the whole class)

>>2167485
I had one brilliant prof who straight up failed you if you misspelled a word in an in-class midterm or in your term paper.

He told us this was his policy two weeks into the course. The next class, 50% of the class had dropped.

>mfw

>>2167483
Lucky you. All my seminars were full of arrogant hipsters.

>>2167489
the compelling argument goes like this: the japanese government would not have surrendered had they not been nuked. the US would have been forced to invade mainland japan, at the cost of enormous loss of life to american soldiers, japanese soldiers, and japanese civilians. it's a fairly compelling argument imo.

>>2167368
>be a native english speaker
>be forced to take classes in my own language

who is derping here really?

>>2167304
>>after talking a bit, she goes to the bathroom
>>accidentally leaves the mic on
you know that was intentional, don;t you?

>>2167495
>Implying the goal of "English" courses is to teach you the language and not how to read and think critically.

>>2167494
Any situation in which such "trades" are being considered is obv. fucked up though

>>2167499
well yeah but that's the nature of war. forces you to make tough choices. there's a decent case to be made that war is by its nature fucked up. i think most people would agree with that, in fact i think that's the title of a wilfred owen poem

>>2167475
A good seminar leader always challenges the students.

I've had plenty that are comfortable with lecturing for two hours and not entertaining a discussion with the class (the whole point herp derp), and others that would bombard us with questions that are so overly-simple and open-ended that the class will simply wait with baited breath until he or she clears the minefield filled with stupid-mines that make you look stupid if you step on them.

I've got one at the moment that does everything right. He tells us what groups to get in (no awkwardly searching for people to work with), gives us presentation dates, sets up a one hour prep session before the seminar so groups can collaborate individual research and present it over the course of an hour or two in the form of an open discussion that actually works because he will steer the conversation-ship in the direction of the point-port so we aren't stranded in the ocean of silence or picking up the pieces when landing on the jagged reef of unrelated discussion.

To be fair, you can't do what he does unless you know about the subject in question, or put a lot of thought into what you are doing. Most lecturers, seminar leaders, tutors, couldn't give less of a shit about making a mark on a bunch of impressionable, somewhat blank canvasses. For some, that is just a job, whereas their research and essays are the career. It's a shame but it's how the thing is financed.

>reading book aloud in class about an adopted girl who is a little shit to her foster mother/brother
>girl says "hell" a lot
>everyone else (including me) says, "heck" or "beep"
>come to a part where girl is teaching her little adopted brother how to swear
>say "hell" once because it's an important factor in this part
>"Anon you need to say either 'heck' or something besides that word, it's not appropriate."
>bitch it was for a greater impact in the dialogue

when we read huck finn in highschool we allways said slave instead of nigger

>>2167510
Forgot to mention it was 6th grade, but you're right

>>2167506
>Hell
>swear word
What the fuck is wrong with these schools?

>>2167492
If this was a scriptwriting course I would totally sympathise with that policy. Considering how when a script is read it is judged superficially by superficial people who would pick a pimple off a flogged ball-sack because it looks so unsightly. They don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to artistic value, so they will look at the font, smell the paper, check the spelling, do anything except read the fucking thing to see whether it looks professional enough to hand on to the next person.

My best professor talked more about tarting up the pig than making it. That was because he had half a century's experience and knew the old mogul mantra: "I get paid to sell 'em, not smell 'em!"

>>2167033
fullretard.jpg
black person here
that's pretty much how anyone an IQ above 70 thinks, but I can see why you would be astonished.

>read an excerpt from some book by a contemporary english writer
>mentions smoking cigarettes, or smoking fags
>teacher explains that in england cigarettes are called fags
>suddenly everyone in class turns to each other with their pens in their mouths saying, "LOL LOOK I'M SMOKING A FAG LOLOLOLOLOL"

i wanted to stop living.

When we read Huck Finn in grade 8, my teacher was a bro. To dispell any potential n-word shenanigans, the very first discussion question was "What evidence does this novel contain that might explain why the word 'nigger' is so offensive today?"

>Read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school.
>Not censor myself and say nigger.
>Only other kid who says it is a neo-nazi.
>After reading, he started calling people Nigger-lovers.

I fucking hate people.

>>2167525
this reminded me of my 7th grade science class where the teacher had to explain to us that coffee was actually a drug due to the naturally occurring caffeine. everyone starts bursting out "HAHA LIKE OMG LIKE IM ON DRUGS!!!!!!"

mfw when i wanted to stab my eyeballs with a spork

Reading this thread really reminded me why I relate to Holden Caulfield and Henry Chinaski. Other people are idiots.

>reading books out loud in high school
Y'all were in retard-tier classes.

>>2167532
Except those characters are big fucking idiots too.

>studying economics/business at Australian uni
>some compulsory accounting units
>lecturer either Indian or east asian
>majority of students also asian
>awkward silence every time a question is asked
>the few times someone answers it's an asian person sitting at the front and nobody (including the lecturer) can understand what they're saying
>mfw it was hilarious at first
>mfw I don't attend lectures anymore and just self teach like the other white kids
>that feel when paying for a piece of paper that says you know how to read and memorize random shit

>>2167538

And that's why we can relate to them. We're all idiots who think we're way better than we are. The mirror doesn't lie, and it is rarely kind.

These kinds of classes are the only reason I am glad I went to a private school where the same dozen people where in my "advanced literature" classes since 5th grade.

>>2167554
Lucky you where their amirite?

>That retard jock that somehow blagged or cheated his way into top set for English
>never pauses for a comma or period, reads as if his life depends on him reading this out as fast as possible
>random 4 second pause
>teacher asks if he needs help
>"No, dramatic pause"
>look at the text, no justification for a dramatic pause
>he was probably struggling to read the next word

>>2167539
I'M AUSTRALIAN AND MAJOR IN ACCOUNTING

>>2167658
>random 4 second pause
>teacher asks if he needs help
>"No, dramatic pause"

This is where you were supposed to laugh maniacally.

>black people
>still caring about race in 2011

god they're so fucking annoying. and it's always in america. here in europe they dont give a fuck. tell those people to grow up and stop making an identity of being a victim when you have a black president now.

>Our class can write an essay and make a presentation on anything they want
>my essay is on the history of the engine, fully researched and sourced, approaching max word limit set for the assignment
>Make a 20 minute powerpoint presentation to annotate my essay, add a couple of youtube videos I spent ages finding them downloading and embedding
>A-

>That guy: "Was the moon land faked?"
>His essay barely scrapes minimum word limit
>His only source is Mythbusters
>His "presentation" is clips pulled straight from Mythbusters
>A+

Our teacher was one of those people who thought if it didn't interest him or he didn't agree with it, it wasn't worth knowing. He probably gave me an A- just for the length of my essay and the fact that I sourced the fuck out of it.

>>2167664
Your post screams with irony.

>>2167665
you jelly that guy had a pleasant personality and was easily liked?

You need to learn that your work isn't all that there is. You need to be liked. You're like the neckbeard who moans because his degree won't get him a job. Get a personality, bro.

>be teacher's pet
>get automatic A for a group presentation I didn't prepare for, although I was by far the worst
I don't even know why the teacher liked me, but I suspect it was because I was one of only 3 girls in a class full of boys.

>>2167661
It says Economics/business in the first line.
I see those English classes didn't improve your reading comprehension skills

>high school
>people have difficulties reading and writing correctly

>Film academy. Writing for film, television and theater degree
>people have difficulties reading and writing correctly

We read excerpts of Mein Kampf in class. There are no black kids, Jews or other minorities in my class though.

>>2167684
protip: that's why they're in school.

>>2167689
do you live in the us? what kind of hillbilly-ass all-white school district doesn't have any jews kicking around?

>>2167692
You must live on the East-coast. Jews are not everywhere, although hollywood might make you believe that.

>>2167690
>protip: that's why they're in school.

I always thought reading and writing is something you learn how to do in 1-2 grade. Beyond that (especially high school or university) it's just retarded.

>>2167698
One would hope that the parents teach their kids how to read before primary school...

>>2167697
i live in the midwest, but when i think of all-white towns my mind goes to wealthy suburbs, not appalachia

>>2167702
Either way, one would expect students in high school to be able to read.

>some free time in english class
>whole class talking, gets a little loud
>dyslexic kid says "can you guys be quiet, im trying to read"
>"you cant read"
>he starts crying

>>2167539
>>2167661

I'm studying Economics in an Australian Uni, totally agree. Awkward as fuck.

>>2167692
A pure one.

>>2167723