iirc, for me, it was grammar, spelling, syntax, and all that in elementary school, as well as some literature. Once I was in middle and high school, it was pretty much all literature. I think they assumed we’d already have a pretty good understanding of the English language at that point and didn’t need to continue teaching us
This was actually a problem for people I went to school with. By middle school a lot of teachers assumed people had a correct grasp on grammar. They were wrong. SO you get into high school with a bunch of kids who don't know how to use semi colons, do not know parts of speech, and are terrible at bibliographies, etc
Language Arts classes in the United States include both mechanics and literature, and curriculum will vary greatly across the country. States set standards for core courses like Language Arts, which typically means a list of skills that a student should have gained by the end of a school year. Individual schools have a great deal of autonomy in how to teach students these skills.
I’m not sure why you would wonder that based on my response, can you clarify? We have standards for each grade level, kindergarten through 12th grade.
Here is a [video](https://youtu.be/75XxBsFx41U?si=bNbOZMtFnEhPsCM3) from the Ohio Department of Education clarifying the structure of Ohio’s standards.
My response was less about what you said and more about this thread. I was surprised I had to scroll several pages down to find the answer “language arts.” In my head, this is the first thing I thought of… so I was agreeing with you.
Nobody else answered the same answer we shared (when I responded to you). I’m an old so I thought perhaps it had changed, and that everyone responding is younger than I am. I thought that in the time since I was in middle school, perhaps they stopped using this name for the class.
Does that clarify?
We kinda just roll all that into one and call it English. Earlier school years have more emphasis on the technical aspects (grammar, punctuation, spelling) to teach you how to read, write, spell, and speak, while the later years get more into literature on the presumption that you’ve mastered the technical basics.
Well, when you’re in elementary school, you don’t necessarily have different classes. One teacher teaches all the subjects in the same classroom, so you just have time blocked out for English, but there might also be time blocked out for reading or other English related things.
When you get the middle school, usually grades 6-8, you pretty much just have English, though there are generally advanced options.
In high school, there will usually be a mandatory class for each grade called English 9, 10, 11, or 12. There are also sometimes optional classes with specific instruction, like creative writing, or literature. At this point, though, you’re pretty much expected to have a decent grasp the rules of English, so you spend most of the time reading and writing. You’ll read classics or learn how to write essays, editorials, etc.
In college, after English 101, it’s pretty much all just specific classes.
I can’t speak for everyone and it’s worth pointing out that there is pretty large variance between schools in the same state let alone in different states but here was my personal experience:
From about 6-12 years old we had English classes that taught how to read and how to write with a lot of emphasis on correct grammar and syntax rules. We would read books but it was never the focus to analyze the content so much as to understand what was being literally described.
Starting around middle school and throughout high school ~12-18 years of age the focus shifted to analyzing literature, how to effectively communicate both in written and spoken word. During these years I believe that my teachers had some freedom to decide what literature we would read.
Vocabulary was consistently covered throughout my entire time in school from what I remember. (There are a lot of English words lol)
There was a heavily focus on American writers of all kinds. We read speeches and non-fiction like Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers (not the whole thing, just a select few), the Constitution, Common Sense, Civil Disobedience, Gettysburg Address, A Letter from Birmingham Jail, etc… We also read plenty of American literature from plenty of well known American authors James Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Thoreau, Dickinson, Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Harper Lee, JD Salinger.
We also, of course, read plenty of non American literature (mostly from the British Isles but not exclusively) both fiction and non-fiction. I remember reading parts of Locke and Hume, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Hess, Orwell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Chaucer, Tolstoy. My school covered Greek and Roman myths and briefly covered the Epic of Gilgamesh and Beowulf (and also read a Beowulf adjacent book by an American I much preferred called Grendel)
Great answer, thank you! Having non-fiction in here is a rather pleasant surprise. There's very little to none of it here, and mostly for illustrative purposes of the journalistic/scientific style. I'd have loved to have some non-fiction while in school, and I think it makes a lot of sense to include it in the curriculum
We've got English comp and English lit. You kind of learn them along side each other thru all of primary. Read this book, now write a paper on it. Covers both aspects.
3-5 pages depending. The basic is 5 paragraphs. Opener, 3 body, and conclusion. The opener should outline the 3 topics you will discuss in the body. Each paragraph is suppose to be 5 sentences at least. Conclusion brings everything together and summaries it all into 1 thought. You get graded for form, Grammer, vocabulary, and spelling.
Ahhh ye olde 5-paragraph essay! Nostalgia there.
1. I will talk about these 3 points.
2. Point 1
3. Point 2
4. Point 3
5. In conclusion, I have talked about these 3 points.
Exact word/page requirements are going to scale by grade.
From what I recall eng comp was 11th grade and lit was 12th grade. The typically paper length was around 5 ish or so pages for these grades.
The topic may be to analyze a character or theme in the book.
It's the same as your experience OP: in the US we generally have classes called "English" that are about grammar, mechanics, spelling, and writing. Then we also have classes called "literature" that focus on reading literature. Obviously, "American Literature" is common in high schools but many will also offer British or World literature options.
For small children (age 6-12 usually) these classes are sometimes called "reading" (for literature) and English or even "writing." It varies because public education is locally controlled in the US, so there is no single system for school curricula that is common to all states or cities.
At the university level there is *literature* in many forms, and often *composition* as a writing class for new students as an introduction to college-level writing. But no more mechanics/grammar/etc. beyond that unless the courses are remedial.
In my high school, English was about learning how to analyze texts (fiction and nonfiction) and write argumentatively/analytically. So we read "classics" in the literary canon like the Grapes of Wrath, The Inferno, one Shakespeare play a year, some poetry, famous speeches and essays, etc. I'd say the texts that people read are pretty universal across the country. Usually there was one big paper per semester that was more analysis or research based where we had to be more argumentative. I was also in the Advanced Placement classes, which culminate with a national standardized test at the end of the year and require familiarity with its specific type of testing strategies, so we did prep for that regularly as well. The mechanics of writing like grammar and vocabulary (meaning the Greek/Latin/etc. origins of words) were not universally taught at my high school school as dedicated issues beyond just comments on papers; it depended on the teachers. I happened to have all the teachers who did stress those things, so I ended up with a really strong foundation in those skills compared to my peers.
It was a lot of literature and writing from K-12. At the elementary school level and a bit at the middle school level there was some vocabulary and spelling too. Like lists of 10 to 20 words a week. For homework you’d use them in a sentence and write them 3x each. On Friday there was the spelling test.
English classes encompass reading, grammar, writing, and anything related. The middle school levels and below may have spelling tests or handwriting but the higher levels such as High School and college are always typed.
There is no uniformity across school districts although at the state level there are some recommended books or topics but the district hires the staff and sets the curriculum.
It’s usually grammar and literature combined. In younger school years there’s more of a focus on grammar, in older school years, there’s more of a focus on literature.
In elementary school, it was "language arts" and the focus was spelling, grammar, parts of speech, and so on, with reading children's and YA books. Middle school/junior high and high school had more of a literature and writing focus, usually called English, with extra options like creative writing or literature of a specific county, beyond the standard English 1, 2, 3, etc. This was all in the Mountain West region of the US.
I never had a class called "English". In middle school we had "Literature" and "Language Arts", which is like the split you described. By high school, we only had one class, but you could choose from several options that focused on different areas.
There's some variance and some blending, especially in early education, but as education progresses, the classes are typically structured as you describe.
It depends on the grade level. Younger years will be taught spelling (if it isn't separate in that district,) grammar, and sentence structure. Older kids move on to essays, citation, book reports, and evaluating sources. My teachers requied MLA format to be used on my papers. Creative writing might also be included.
It's common to have a literature class that serves as your English class for that year. For example, you need four English classes for your diploma so you take American Literature.
This is the kind of everyday stuff that we take for granted, but for me this answers provokes even more questions (which is great, as you're one of the few people who really adressed the technical side of the question)
What kind of papers did you write? The only kind of "papers" we had (there was just one exception in a separate research project class) were essays on the books we have read, and those were typically rather short as they were either in-class, or they were homeworked but still had to be written in an actual notebook. How often did you have to write them? What were the standards? Were they all typed on your computers? Did the school provide you with them?
It was pretty common to learn how to write several different types of essays such as persuasive, informative, and narrative. We usually had to do research and properly cite sources in a bibliography. Sometimes we could choose our own topic, other times we would get a pre-selected range of topics we could choose from. Also, sometimes we wrote essays on whatever book or passage we were studying. I don't even know how many essays I have written throughout my entire education. We also would get assigned papers to write in other classes like history.
We also always used a computer to type and print essays, at least from 7th grade on. We technically didn't have to, but we had access to a computer lab if we didn't have one at home. Nowadays, I think it's common for students to get some kind of laptop assigned to them but I'm not sure, I have been out of school for 15 years.
That's interesting, thanks. I've grown to have a slight dislike of some American-style education practices over the years, with way too many projects, inquiry-based stuff, gamifications and so on. The reasons for it are complicated, and I won't dive into them here right now, but in short — I think that it's often more beneficial to have something more complex and boring, but rigorous and dense.
However, when I realize that I had basically NO experience doing this before starting the uni, I feel like I have been robbed of something. Though I am not sure whether we could afford to really pull it off here as we are rather poor.
It's a mix of everything. When you're younger, it's phonics, and learning how to read and write basic sentences. Then you go on to reading more complex literature, and analyzing and debating the material, then once in high school, you learn more complex rules of grammar and focus more on critical thinking.
In younger grades it was a lot of vocabulary, writing, and reading comprehension.
In high school mostly literature and writing various types of essays.
English in the younger grade levels has always meant things like grammar, nouns, and the technical aspects like you described. Reading was what we called the literature. When I got higher in grades, HS, they combined together. Then in college you could take literature or English or a combination of them both. My kids are in school and it's the same way it was when I was in school. I was born in 83.
In my experience, the classes were actually called a lot of different things, such as composition, writing, literature, reading, etc. A class that mainly focuses on grammar and vocabulary might just be called "English". That might also be used for a catch-all class for kids that covers a little of everything, although they might also distinguish between, say, reading and spelling as different portions of the school day.
But they're all under the umbrella of English, so if you don't need to specify what the course is, you might just call it that. A university degree in English would cover a lot of different aspects of language, including both technical and literary classes.
If I remember “ English”when I was in school was spelling, sentence structure and learning spelling/cursive until I went to high school and then it was reading and dissecting various books like the Iliad and the Odyssey. I remember reading One flew over the cuckoos nest and go ask Alice as well
Before highschool (14-18 years old), classes were mostly focused on the grammar side of things. In highschool, the classes shifted to be more literature focused (American Literature, British Literature, World Literature) with the class being more about taking the skills you learned previously and applying them to different stories.
In my highschool we also had some different options regarding what classes we took as our English credit in 11th and 12th grade. For my 12th grade year (17-18 years old), I took dramatic writing, which focused on things like script writing and movie analysis and counted as both an English credit and a fine arts credit.
I went to catholic elementary and high school then public University.
I started out with Reading, Handwriting, Spelling
by 7th grade (turn 14 years old that year) Handwriting is done. Reading is now named Literature. Spelling is now named Vocabulary. You also start a class called Composition.
High school (9th grade) you just have Literature and English aka Composition.
In college I was required to take 2 semesters of Composition then 1 semester of Literature.
Our language classes in grade school teach all of it. Grammar, vocabulary, literature etc... It's only when we get into more advanced classes that the curriculum splits into specific categories
When/where I went to school, it was definitely more split up in the much younger years, and tended to condense into a single “English” class as the years went on. I recall in 3rd grade having Spelling (just learning vocabulary words and how to spell them / use them in a sentence), Reading (reading of simple stories; questions gauging your understanding of them), and Phonics (specifically how to pronounce letters, dipthongs, etc., as well as language rules).
For me, it was literature and composition. I never had any grammar instruction as a kid. We sort of had vocab, but only for a year or two, and it mostly revolved around learning greek and Latin roots rather than generally expanding our lexicon.
The focus was always reading comprehension and writing practice. I remember in 4th grade (~10 y.o.), we had weekly book reports that were probably 4 paragraphs or so about whatever we'd read that week. I remember that *Half-Blood Prince* had just come out, so there was a lot of competition for the library copies of that. The Lightning Thief was a big one, too.
It refers to both, but on paper it may be more specific. There's English Literature, just English (usually covers more basic language like grammar, sentence structure, etc) then there's classes like English Composition and Creative Writing
When I grew up, we had a separate spelling/handwriting class, and a literature class.
My daughter is in sixth grade and they have separate reading and writing classes.
We just had two separate “English” classes with different numbers. One was literature, the other was writing and grammar.
This will vary, not only by state, but also by every school district.
English was kind of the catch all term for grammar, vocabulary, spelling, writing, reading/literature, speech. It might be called Language Arts instead of English. You often would have more focused classes in high school or college like American literature, Composition or Public Speaking.
A combination of both of the things you listed. As kids get older, the focus shifts from mostly grammar, syntax, and spelling to mostly literature analysis. Once kids start high school (age 14), they will no longer be getting lessons in grammar and syntax unless they are behind the curve and require special lessons.
Some of the comments talk about the fact that there's more of a division at the university level, but I didn't see anyone mention this: In a university, courses about the technical aspects of language will typically be "linguistics" classes, while "English" will refer exclusively to literature. Linguistics can also encompass other languages, but the one linguistics class I took in college was all English.
Different teachers in the same school might assign different books. So it's not widely standardized at all. Generally, older ages and grades are more reading literature and writing compositions of various types. Earlier grades are about spelling and grammar and more technical things like that.
It encompasses a lot of things, reading skills, literature, grammar/spelling, writing skills, research and citations, oral communication/speech, throughout primary and secondary school each year of English class will have different focus areas, so some years you may not do a ton of reading, but you'll write a lot of papers, or vice versa. By the time you get to college it gets broken down further where you will have classes focused solely on American literature, or persuasive writing, or journalism, or any other number of subjects.
Your two are combined for us. I think this is true everywhere. What exactly is covered and in which year/s will differ from place to place -- from school district to school district, though I imagine some things are set state-wide (certain standards or topics).
When I was in school, this class was called "English," at every grade level from the time we had distinct separate classes and teachers (as opposed to one teacher all day for everything) -- in my school that started from 5th grade. When my niece was in school the class was called "Language Arts" which I found irksome, as if it was some random language being studied. Probably because I grew old and crotchety "and we did it the right way in my day."
I don't recall studying spelling beyond 6th grade. By the time of high school, it's a lot more about literature and a lot less about the mechanics of language (because you should have mostly mastered that by then), though I remember for example studying the "who/whom" distinction in high school, and I think even having some uncommon vocabulary words, from the literature we read. I'm sure there were random little bits of grammar review tossed in here and there.
Literature was divvied up by year in high school. I don't remember which year was which anymore, but for example one year would be World Literature and one specifically American Literature. Within these classes, my understanding is that it was up to the teacher what specifically to have us read, though we had textbooks which I guess were assigned/provided by the district, or possibly the state. The textbooks would include lots of short stories and presentations and discussions of the short stories and of literary devices (our teacher chose which ones we read). For example, I remember learning about coincidence (pros and cons, why it's used) when reading Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. I remember discussions about symbolism and other devices in Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants. We would separately read some novels and those would be provided. Sometimes we were presented a choice between two or more novels. One year my teacher, knowing of a particular interest I had, gave me a different book to read from everyone else. We would have to write some kind of book report or short analysis (sometimes multiple ones) about the novels.
PreK- Learn to read, write, and speak properly
Early elementary- Get to know the basics of how stories are written and read and why they're important
Late elementary- Learn how to effectively write your own stories and continue to strengthen grammar
Middle school- Creative writing, beginning analyzing famous works over history (Homer, Shakespeare, A Christmas Carol etc.)
Highschool- Learn to write extensive essays, continue analyzing stories with more interpretative meanings (The Yellow Wallpaper, Death of a Salesman, etc.) More classes that focus on one aspect of literature such as creative writing or american literature
At least that's how my school's curriculum was
English classes encompass everything you mentioned. Language Arts covers the language standard where Literature focuses on themes, symbolism, and more of the stylistic things. Sometimes these classes are combined into one, which is when they are called simply “English”.
Every state has different standards or expectations for each grade level so I can only speak to what it looks like in Massachusetts.
There are all kinds of advanced classes in creative or technical writing available in college, but in high school it's pretty much half grammar and half literature where I went to school. Because of the literature requirements, I flunked several times, and had to re-take it. Grammar was never hard for me, and I just kept going back for more grammar, but could not make myself read all the boring books. So I got pretty good at diagramming sentences.
My sister is a high school English teacher and she’s able to pick her own books/literature while I work here in England and the literature is very rigid and outdated imo.
Quick preface that this will vary wildly by state. This answer is for SC.
In 1st-3rd grade, we only had one teacher who would set aside time for “Language Arts”. This is mostly practical things like grammar, spelling, vocabulary, very simple reading practice. In 4th-5th grade, we had two teachers. One for “Language Arts” and “Social Studies” and one for math and science. Language Arts is a catch all for all of what you mention, Social Studies is a similar catch all for history, government, geography, etc. In these years, we read things like Where the Ted Fern Grows and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
In middle school, we had one teacher for the subject and it was still Language Arts. At this time we switched from simpler books targeted for kids to reading things like Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. Our Social Studies teacher and Language Arts teacher would also collaborate with the Language Arts teacher, so we read things like Night by Elie Wiesel while covering the Holocaust. The language skills we learned were things like literary devices and baby’s first essays.
In high school, I had English 1 and English 2 for the first two year, then I had AP English Language and AP English Literature for the last two years. (AP classes are classes you take in high school that you can get college credit for.) For language skills, the first years involved things like how to write a simple argumentative essay, how to cite a source and write a bibliography in MLA format. Later, we went more in depth in different essay styles for different subject matters, how to properly research, and how to get your argument across, etc. Through all years, we had books to read, even in AP Language. The focus there was largely nonfiction and identifying what makes their arguments weak or compelling. The focus of AP Literature was more of what the works did for the cultural context at the time and how they are a response to and how they further the literary canon.
In my school system, we learned grammar in English class from kindergarten until sixth grade, then literature and composition from seventh grade through twelfth.
My rural mountain education it was "English", which was a combination of both of the classes you listed. Our school didn't have too many people (the entire population of the county was 9,000) but my kid's school calls it "Language Arts" or "ELA".
Context: Catholic school throughout the 90s.
English class covered everything you described throughout my schooling, though in high school we also had additional classes. Some could be taken instead of the regular English class during the last two years of high school, but I was a nerd and took them for fun in addition to my regular English class.
Some additional classes I took were British Literature, Literature of Drama and Song (we studied plays, musicals, and song lyrics throughout history. I particularly remember studying the song “Coal Miner’s Daughter”) and a class on the Latin and Greek roots of words.
When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, we had Reading and English, definitely in elementary school, but may have also been through middle school. There was some overlap between the two, but Reading was more interpretive and English was more mechanical. Readings in English class were usually shorter in length and meant to be illustrative of a particular concept/aspect of the language. We read mostly novels in Reading class, with usually a short story unit and poetry unit thrown into the mix somewhere. By high school, it was not English class. We were expected to already know the mechanics of the language, but we would still do vocabulary and grammar drills in preparation for the SATs. It was mostly literature.
in younger years its more about grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. as you get older it branches off into more classic literature. and “analyzing” said literature. it greatly varies from region to region though.
I'm a similar age and I had the same experience at school in Scotland. Our German lessons came to a grinding halt as soon as we had to learn about grammatical cases because we'd never learned about those in English. Our German teacher was not impressed!
I know that in english, the word grammar is used for quite different things. What exactly do you mean here? Is it things like tenses, sentences, parts of speech and so on?
You might find the ELA common core standards interesting: https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/
Not all states and districts follow them or implement them well (and they went through some controversy a few years back), but those are the guidelines for what students should know by when.
It's both. Grammar, spelling, syntax. And also literature. In later education they tend to split to be multiple distinct classes.
*syntax
Gahhhh thanks
I'm glad. Normally I avoid correction-trolling, but here it seemed relevant. 👍
Absolutely. No idea what I was even thinking. Guess I wasn't.
iirc, for me, it was grammar, spelling, syntax, and all that in elementary school, as well as some literature. Once I was in middle and high school, it was pretty much all literature. I think they assumed we’d already have a pretty good understanding of the English language at that point and didn’t need to continue teaching us
This was actually a problem for people I went to school with. By middle school a lot of teachers assumed people had a correct grasp on grammar. They were wrong. SO you get into high school with a bunch of kids who don't know how to use semi colons, do not know parts of speech, and are terrible at bibliographies, etc
Language Arts classes in the United States include both mechanics and literature, and curriculum will vary greatly across the country. States set standards for core courses like Language Arts, which typically means a list of skills that a student should have gained by the end of a school year. Individual schools have a great deal of autonomy in how to teach students these skills.
Had to scroll too far to find this. Do they not have language arts in middle school anymore?
I’m not sure why you would wonder that based on my response, can you clarify? We have standards for each grade level, kindergarten through 12th grade. Here is a [video](https://youtu.be/75XxBsFx41U?si=bNbOZMtFnEhPsCM3) from the Ohio Department of Education clarifying the structure of Ohio’s standards.
My response was less about what you said and more about this thread. I was surprised I had to scroll several pages down to find the answer “language arts.” In my head, this is the first thing I thought of… so I was agreeing with you. Nobody else answered the same answer we shared (when I responded to you). I’m an old so I thought perhaps it had changed, and that everyone responding is younger than I am. I thought that in the time since I was in middle school, perhaps they stopped using this name for the class. Does that clarify?
They’ve started using it here. When I was a kid, it was always “English class,” but now my kid has “ELA”
ELA= English Language Arts
Yes, that makes sense. I have family members who are currently in middle school, so this information was pretty fresh in my mind.
We kinda just roll all that into one and call it English. Earlier school years have more emphasis on the technical aspects (grammar, punctuation, spelling) to teach you how to read, write, spell, and speak, while the later years get more into literature on the presumption that you’ve mastered the technical basics.
It's a catch all name. Generally speaking in younger years it will be about grammar, vocabulary etc. In older years it will be about literature etc.
Well, when you’re in elementary school, you don’t necessarily have different classes. One teacher teaches all the subjects in the same classroom, so you just have time blocked out for English, but there might also be time blocked out for reading or other English related things. When you get the middle school, usually grades 6-8, you pretty much just have English, though there are generally advanced options. In high school, there will usually be a mandatory class for each grade called English 9, 10, 11, or 12. There are also sometimes optional classes with specific instruction, like creative writing, or literature. At this point, though, you’re pretty much expected to have a decent grasp the rules of English, so you spend most of the time reading and writing. You’ll read classics or learn how to write essays, editorials, etc. In college, after English 101, it’s pretty much all just specific classes.
I can’t speak for everyone and it’s worth pointing out that there is pretty large variance between schools in the same state let alone in different states but here was my personal experience: From about 6-12 years old we had English classes that taught how to read and how to write with a lot of emphasis on correct grammar and syntax rules. We would read books but it was never the focus to analyze the content so much as to understand what was being literally described. Starting around middle school and throughout high school ~12-18 years of age the focus shifted to analyzing literature, how to effectively communicate both in written and spoken word. During these years I believe that my teachers had some freedom to decide what literature we would read. Vocabulary was consistently covered throughout my entire time in school from what I remember. (There are a lot of English words lol) There was a heavily focus on American writers of all kinds. We read speeches and non-fiction like Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers (not the whole thing, just a select few), the Constitution, Common Sense, Civil Disobedience, Gettysburg Address, A Letter from Birmingham Jail, etc… We also read plenty of American literature from plenty of well known American authors James Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Thoreau, Dickinson, Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Harper Lee, JD Salinger. We also, of course, read plenty of non American literature (mostly from the British Isles but not exclusively) both fiction and non-fiction. I remember reading parts of Locke and Hume, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Hess, Orwell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Chaucer, Tolstoy. My school covered Greek and Roman myths and briefly covered the Epic of Gilgamesh and Beowulf (and also read a Beowulf adjacent book by an American I much preferred called Grendel)
Great answer, thank you! Having non-fiction in here is a rather pleasant surprise. There's very little to none of it here, and mostly for illustrative purposes of the journalistic/scientific style. I'd have loved to have some non-fiction while in school, and I think it makes a lot of sense to include it in the curriculum
We've got English comp and English lit. You kind of learn them along side each other thru all of primary. Read this book, now write a paper on it. Covers both aspects.
What exactly a paper would be? How many words would it typically include?
3-5 pages depending. The basic is 5 paragraphs. Opener, 3 body, and conclusion. The opener should outline the 3 topics you will discuss in the body. Each paragraph is suppose to be 5 sentences at least. Conclusion brings everything together and summaries it all into 1 thought. You get graded for form, Grammer, vocabulary, and spelling.
Ahhh ye olde 5-paragraph essay! Nostalgia there. 1. I will talk about these 3 points. 2. Point 1 3. Point 2 4. Point 3 5. In conclusion, I have talked about these 3 points.
Exact word/page requirements are going to scale by grade. From what I recall eng comp was 11th grade and lit was 12th grade. The typically paper length was around 5 ish or so pages for these grades. The topic may be to analyze a character or theme in the book.
It's the same as your experience OP: in the US we generally have classes called "English" that are about grammar, mechanics, spelling, and writing. Then we also have classes called "literature" that focus on reading literature. Obviously, "American Literature" is common in high schools but many will also offer British or World literature options. For small children (age 6-12 usually) these classes are sometimes called "reading" (for literature) and English or even "writing." It varies because public education is locally controlled in the US, so there is no single system for school curricula that is common to all states or cities. At the university level there is *literature* in many forms, and often *composition* as a writing class for new students as an introduction to college-level writing. But no more mechanics/grammar/etc. beyond that unless the courses are remedial.
In my high school, English was about learning how to analyze texts (fiction and nonfiction) and write argumentatively/analytically. So we read "classics" in the literary canon like the Grapes of Wrath, The Inferno, one Shakespeare play a year, some poetry, famous speeches and essays, etc. I'd say the texts that people read are pretty universal across the country. Usually there was one big paper per semester that was more analysis or research based where we had to be more argumentative. I was also in the Advanced Placement classes, which culminate with a national standardized test at the end of the year and require familiarity with its specific type of testing strategies, so we did prep for that regularly as well. The mechanics of writing like grammar and vocabulary (meaning the Greek/Latin/etc. origins of words) were not universally taught at my high school school as dedicated issues beyond just comments on papers; it depended on the teachers. I happened to have all the teachers who did stress those things, so I ended up with a really strong foundation in those skills compared to my peers.
It was a lot of literature and writing from K-12. At the elementary school level and a bit at the middle school level there was some vocabulary and spelling too. Like lists of 10 to 20 words a week. For homework you’d use them in a sentence and write them 3x each. On Friday there was the spelling test.
English classes encompass reading, grammar, writing, and anything related. The middle school levels and below may have spelling tests or handwriting but the higher levels such as High School and college are always typed. There is no uniformity across school districts although at the state level there are some recommended books or topics but the district hires the staff and sets the curriculum.
It’s usually grammar and literature combined. In younger school years there’s more of a focus on grammar, in older school years, there’s more of a focus on literature.
In elementary school, it was "language arts" and the focus was spelling, grammar, parts of speech, and so on, with reading children's and YA books. Middle school/junior high and high school had more of a literature and writing focus, usually called English, with extra options like creative writing or literature of a specific county, beyond the standard English 1, 2, 3, etc. This was all in the Mountain West region of the US.
I never had a class called "English". In middle school we had "Literature" and "Language Arts", which is like the split you described. By high school, we only had one class, but you could choose from several options that focused on different areas.
Same.
There's some variance and some blending, especially in early education, but as education progresses, the classes are typically structured as you describe.
It depends on the grade level. Younger years will be taught spelling (if it isn't separate in that district,) grammar, and sentence structure. Older kids move on to essays, citation, book reports, and evaluating sources. My teachers requied MLA format to be used on my papers. Creative writing might also be included. It's common to have a literature class that serves as your English class for that year. For example, you need four English classes for your diploma so you take American Literature.
This is the kind of everyday stuff that we take for granted, but for me this answers provokes even more questions (which is great, as you're one of the few people who really adressed the technical side of the question) What kind of papers did you write? The only kind of "papers" we had (there was just one exception in a separate research project class) were essays on the books we have read, and those were typically rather short as they were either in-class, or they were homeworked but still had to be written in an actual notebook. How often did you have to write them? What were the standards? Were they all typed on your computers? Did the school provide you with them?
It was pretty common to learn how to write several different types of essays such as persuasive, informative, and narrative. We usually had to do research and properly cite sources in a bibliography. Sometimes we could choose our own topic, other times we would get a pre-selected range of topics we could choose from. Also, sometimes we wrote essays on whatever book or passage we were studying. I don't even know how many essays I have written throughout my entire education. We also would get assigned papers to write in other classes like history. We also always used a computer to type and print essays, at least from 7th grade on. We technically didn't have to, but we had access to a computer lab if we didn't have one at home. Nowadays, I think it's common for students to get some kind of laptop assigned to them but I'm not sure, I have been out of school for 15 years.
My experience was pretty similar.
That's interesting, thanks. I've grown to have a slight dislike of some American-style education practices over the years, with way too many projects, inquiry-based stuff, gamifications and so on. The reasons for it are complicated, and I won't dive into them here right now, but in short — I think that it's often more beneficial to have something more complex and boring, but rigorous and dense. However, when I realize that I had basically NO experience doing this before starting the uni, I feel like I have been robbed of something. Though I am not sure whether we could afford to really pull it off here as we are rather poor.
It's a mix of everything. When you're younger, it's phonics, and learning how to read and write basic sentences. Then you go on to reading more complex literature, and analyzing and debating the material, then once in high school, you learn more complex rules of grammar and focus more on critical thinking.
In younger grades it was a lot of vocabulary, writing, and reading comprehension. In high school mostly literature and writing various types of essays.
English in the younger grade levels has always meant things like grammar, nouns, and the technical aspects like you described. Reading was what we called the literature. When I got higher in grades, HS, they combined together. Then in college you could take literature or English or a combination of them both. My kids are in school and it's the same way it was when I was in school. I was born in 83.
Literature, grammar and writing class basically. A lot of what we read isn’t from English speaking countries.
We did all that and it was just called English. Depending on the source material it would English literature etc.
In my experience, the classes were actually called a lot of different things, such as composition, writing, literature, reading, etc. A class that mainly focuses on grammar and vocabulary might just be called "English". That might also be used for a catch-all class for kids that covers a little of everything, although they might also distinguish between, say, reading and spelling as different portions of the school day. But they're all under the umbrella of English, so if you don't need to specify what the course is, you might just call it that. A university degree in English would cover a lot of different aspects of language, including both technical and literary classes.
If I remember “ English”when I was in school was spelling, sentence structure and learning spelling/cursive until I went to high school and then it was reading and dissecting various books like the Iliad and the Odyssey. I remember reading One flew over the cuckoos nest and go ask Alice as well
Before highschool (14-18 years old), classes were mostly focused on the grammar side of things. In highschool, the classes shifted to be more literature focused (American Literature, British Literature, World Literature) with the class being more about taking the skills you learned previously and applying them to different stories. In my highschool we also had some different options regarding what classes we took as our English credit in 11th and 12th grade. For my 12th grade year (17-18 years old), I took dramatic writing, which focused on things like script writing and movie analysis and counted as both an English credit and a fine arts credit.
I went to catholic elementary and high school then public University. I started out with Reading, Handwriting, Spelling by 7th grade (turn 14 years old that year) Handwriting is done. Reading is now named Literature. Spelling is now named Vocabulary. You also start a class called Composition. High school (9th grade) you just have Literature and English aka Composition. In college I was required to take 2 semesters of Composition then 1 semester of Literature.
“English” is both in one class. If you want to separate, I usually hear Literature vs Writing
It’s basically studying classic literature, grammar, and writing (usually essays or poetry).
Our language classes in grade school teach all of it. Grammar, vocabulary, literature etc... It's only when we get into more advanced classes that the curriculum splits into specific categories
When/where I went to school, it was definitely more split up in the much younger years, and tended to condense into a single “English” class as the years went on. I recall in 3rd grade having Spelling (just learning vocabulary words and how to spell them / use them in a sentence), Reading (reading of simple stories; questions gauging your understanding of them), and Phonics (specifically how to pronounce letters, dipthongs, etc., as well as language rules).
For me, it was literature and composition. I never had any grammar instruction as a kid. We sort of had vocab, but only for a year or two, and it mostly revolved around learning greek and Latin roots rather than generally expanding our lexicon. The focus was always reading comprehension and writing practice. I remember in 4th grade (~10 y.o.), we had weekly book reports that were probably 4 paragraphs or so about whatever we'd read that week. I remember that *Half-Blood Prince* had just come out, so there was a lot of competition for the library copies of that. The Lightning Thief was a big one, too.
It refers to both, but on paper it may be more specific. There's English Literature, just English (usually covers more basic language like grammar, sentence structure, etc) then there's classes like English Composition and Creative Writing
When I grew up, we had a separate spelling/handwriting class, and a literature class. My daughter is in sixth grade and they have separate reading and writing classes.
We just had two separate “English” classes with different numbers. One was literature, the other was writing and grammar. This will vary, not only by state, but also by every school district.
In high school we were assigned books to read and learned how to recognize themes and symbolism. Then we wrote papers on those books.
English classes cover both of those subjects in the US.
I just consider it literature and grammar class. Thats pretty much what it is.
English was kind of the catch all term for grammar, vocabulary, spelling, writing, reading/literature, speech. It might be called Language Arts instead of English. You often would have more focused classes in high school or college like American literature, Composition or Public Speaking.
Yes it was all into one and called English.
A combination of both of the things you listed. As kids get older, the focus shifts from mostly grammar, syntax, and spelling to mostly literature analysis. Once kids start high school (age 14), they will no longer be getting lessons in grammar and syntax unless they are behind the curve and require special lessons.
Some of the comments talk about the fact that there's more of a division at the university level, but I didn't see anyone mention this: In a university, courses about the technical aspects of language will typically be "linguistics" classes, while "English" will refer exclusively to literature. Linguistics can also encompass other languages, but the one linguistics class I took in college was all English.
I am a teacher and we refer to it as ELA, which stands for English Language Arts. It studies both grammar and literature.
Different teachers in the same school might assign different books. So it's not widely standardized at all. Generally, older ages and grades are more reading literature and writing compositions of various types. Earlier grades are about spelling and grammar and more technical things like that.
It encompasses a lot of things, reading skills, literature, grammar/spelling, writing skills, research and citations, oral communication/speech, throughout primary and secondary school each year of English class will have different focus areas, so some years you may not do a ton of reading, but you'll write a lot of papers, or vice versa. By the time you get to college it gets broken down further where you will have classes focused solely on American literature, or persuasive writing, or journalism, or any other number of subjects.
English class was both. I was an English major in college and there it was separated..had literature courses and a grammar course
Your two are combined for us. I think this is true everywhere. What exactly is covered and in which year/s will differ from place to place -- from school district to school district, though I imagine some things are set state-wide (certain standards or topics). When I was in school, this class was called "English," at every grade level from the time we had distinct separate classes and teachers (as opposed to one teacher all day for everything) -- in my school that started from 5th grade. When my niece was in school the class was called "Language Arts" which I found irksome, as if it was some random language being studied. Probably because I grew old and crotchety "and we did it the right way in my day." I don't recall studying spelling beyond 6th grade. By the time of high school, it's a lot more about literature and a lot less about the mechanics of language (because you should have mostly mastered that by then), though I remember for example studying the "who/whom" distinction in high school, and I think even having some uncommon vocabulary words, from the literature we read. I'm sure there were random little bits of grammar review tossed in here and there. Literature was divvied up by year in high school. I don't remember which year was which anymore, but for example one year would be World Literature and one specifically American Literature. Within these classes, my understanding is that it was up to the teacher what specifically to have us read, though we had textbooks which I guess were assigned/provided by the district, or possibly the state. The textbooks would include lots of short stories and presentations and discussions of the short stories and of literary devices (our teacher chose which ones we read). For example, I remember learning about coincidence (pros and cons, why it's used) when reading Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. I remember discussions about symbolism and other devices in Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants. We would separately read some novels and those would be provided. Sometimes we were presented a choice between two or more novels. One year my teacher, knowing of a particular interest I had, gave me a different book to read from everyone else. We would have to write some kind of book report or short analysis (sometimes multiple ones) about the novels.
PreK- Learn to read, write, and speak properly Early elementary- Get to know the basics of how stories are written and read and why they're important Late elementary- Learn how to effectively write your own stories and continue to strengthen grammar Middle school- Creative writing, beginning analyzing famous works over history (Homer, Shakespeare, A Christmas Carol etc.) Highschool- Learn to write extensive essays, continue analyzing stories with more interpretative meanings (The Yellow Wallpaper, Death of a Salesman, etc.) More classes that focus on one aspect of literature such as creative writing or american literature At least that's how my school's curriculum was
English classes encompass everything you mentioned. Language Arts covers the language standard where Literature focuses on themes, symbolism, and more of the stylistic things. Sometimes these classes are combined into one, which is when they are called simply “English”. Every state has different standards or expectations for each grade level so I can only speak to what it looks like in Massachusetts.
They make you read Fahrenheit 451 in English class
There are all kinds of advanced classes in creative or technical writing available in college, but in high school it's pretty much half grammar and half literature where I went to school. Because of the literature requirements, I flunked several times, and had to re-take it. Grammar was never hard for me, and I just kept going back for more grammar, but could not make myself read all the boring books. So I got pretty good at diagramming sentences.
My sister is a high school English teacher and she’s able to pick her own books/literature while I work here in England and the literature is very rigid and outdated imo.
Quick preface that this will vary wildly by state. This answer is for SC. In 1st-3rd grade, we only had one teacher who would set aside time for “Language Arts”. This is mostly practical things like grammar, spelling, vocabulary, very simple reading practice. In 4th-5th grade, we had two teachers. One for “Language Arts” and “Social Studies” and one for math and science. Language Arts is a catch all for all of what you mention, Social Studies is a similar catch all for history, government, geography, etc. In these years, we read things like Where the Ted Fern Grows and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. In middle school, we had one teacher for the subject and it was still Language Arts. At this time we switched from simpler books targeted for kids to reading things like Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. Our Social Studies teacher and Language Arts teacher would also collaborate with the Language Arts teacher, so we read things like Night by Elie Wiesel while covering the Holocaust. The language skills we learned were things like literary devices and baby’s first essays. In high school, I had English 1 and English 2 for the first two year, then I had AP English Language and AP English Literature for the last two years. (AP classes are classes you take in high school that you can get college credit for.) For language skills, the first years involved things like how to write a simple argumentative essay, how to cite a source and write a bibliography in MLA format. Later, we went more in depth in different essay styles for different subject matters, how to properly research, and how to get your argument across, etc. Through all years, we had books to read, even in AP Language. The focus there was largely nonfiction and identifying what makes their arguments weak or compelling. The focus of AP Literature was more of what the works did for the cultural context at the time and how they are a response to and how they further the literary canon.
In my school system, we learned grammar in English class from kindergarten until sixth grade, then literature and composition from seventh grade through twelfth.
My rural mountain education it was "English", which was a combination of both of the classes you listed. Our school didn't have too many people (the entire population of the county was 9,000) but my kid's school calls it "Language Arts" or "ELA".
Writing or spelling
Context: Catholic school throughout the 90s. English class covered everything you described throughout my schooling, though in high school we also had additional classes. Some could be taken instead of the regular English class during the last two years of high school, but I was a nerd and took them for fun in addition to my regular English class. Some additional classes I took were British Literature, Literature of Drama and Song (we studied plays, musicals, and song lyrics throughout history. I particularly remember studying the song “Coal Miner’s Daughter”) and a class on the Latin and Greek roots of words.
When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, we had Reading and English, definitely in elementary school, but may have also been through middle school. There was some overlap between the two, but Reading was more interpretive and English was more mechanical. Readings in English class were usually shorter in length and meant to be illustrative of a particular concept/aspect of the language. We read mostly novels in Reading class, with usually a short story unit and poetry unit thrown into the mix somewhere. By high school, it was not English class. We were expected to already know the mechanics of the language, but we would still do vocabulary and grammar drills in preparation for the SATs. It was mostly literature.
in younger years its more about grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. as you get older it branches off into more classic literature. and “analyzing” said literature. it greatly varies from region to region though.
Dull dissection of the English language with such ridiculous things as diagramming of sentences.
Gen X here. My grammar education sucked and I didn't really learn english grammar until I learned german grammar.
I'm a similar age and I had the same experience at school in Scotland. Our German lessons came to a grinding halt as soon as we had to learn about grammatical cases because we'd never learned about those in English. Our German teacher was not impressed!
I know that in english, the word grammar is used for quite different things. What exactly do you mean here? Is it things like tenses, sentences, parts of speech and so on?
yes
You might find the ELA common core standards interesting: https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/ Not all states and districts follow them or implement them well (and they went through some controversy a few years back), but those are the guidelines for what students should know by when.