I learned so much in my English class this year. Of all the things that I learned, three things that really stuck out to me were genres, plays, and poetry. Genres really caught my attention because I love reading; whether it’s one of my big brother’s essays or one of Rick Riordan’s Greek mythology books. Another thing I loved learning about was plays. As my Mom sometimes says, I’m a total “drama queen.” So, I’d make a great actress. I also love going to see musicals or plays. It looks really fun to act and to play a part in a play. And finally, poetry. Poetry is something that I have mixed feelings for. Well, then again, isn’t each piece of poetry supposed to tie in a different emotion? Yes, I think so.
A genre is a category of creative structure, like in literature, described by resemblances in form, style, or subject matter. Every book has a genre. For example, my favorite book: Little House on the Prairie, is historical fiction. Historical fiction is a type of book that has fake characters, but takes place in a real time frame, at a real place, and sometimes the events are real (World War I, the Great Depression, etc.). But, in Little House on the Prairie the characters are real, too. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of those books, wrote each book based on a different part of her childhood with her family. She did tweak some of the stories, but each book is based off of a real time in her life and every single person in the books are real people that Laura knew. So, it’s kind of like half historical fiction, have autobiography. Is historical autobiography a thing? Another example is Victoria Schwab’s book trilogy: My Guardian Angel. It’s about an angel named Aria who needs to earn her wings by visiting three girls who are going through hard times and need someone to help them stay happy. I read all three books, and it’s obviously a fiction book. A fiction book is a book that is completely fake and could never happen in real life. I figured out that it’s a fiction book because the angel travels by walking through her own shadow. That’s not even possible! Another way I know it’s not true is the angel turns invisible! That’s not possible either! Well, I could go on and on and on about different books I’ve read, loved, and figured out the genre of. But, there’s other things to know about genres! Like, when you’re writing a book, or maybe just a three page essay on a story completely off the top of your head. The story needs to have a genre! It could be sci-fi (science fiction), fiction, fantasy, or maybe even a horror book. Sci-fi is a fiction book, but the whole book has science tied into it. Fantasy is like your own fairy tale. It could have princesses, talking animals, fairies, pirates, aliens, mermaids, and so much more! I personally do not like fantasy books because they’re too girly for me. I’m, yes, a girl, but I do not like princesses or fairies or that kind of stuff. But you can write or read whatever kind of book you want to. Another genre I’m not a fan of is nonfiction. There are very few nonfiction books I’ll read. A nonfiction book is a book that is full of facts. Everything in the book is true. I like astronomy nonfiction books, and that’s it. I don’t like anything else. But, everyone’s different. My brother, Chase, loves reading about animals, especially dogs and cheetahs. There are probably at least fifty more genres that I’ve never even heard of before, but what I know now is enough information to help me write a book! This will be useful to me in the future and I hope that if I ever want to become an author, this year’s English class will immediately come back into play.
Plays are another thing I learned about this year. A play is a dramatic work for the stage or to be aired. When I learned about plays, it really stuck with me because when I grow up, something that I’m considering is acting. So I think that learning about plays was perfect for me. There are lots of parts to a play. There’s the script, the cast, the acts, the scenes, and the exit. The script is the text for the play, which is what you read when you’re reading a play. The actors and actresses have to memorize the script for when they perform, because it would just be weird if the actors would be standing on stage reading off of a paper… Anyway, the cast is the group of actors and actresses in the play. For example: a few months ago I went to see Peter Pan, the musical, be performed at the high school. The boy who played Peter Pan, the girl who played Tinker Belle, the girl who played Wendy, and all the other actors and actresses in the play, that’s the cast. In a play, there’s always an introduction. The introduction, just like in a book, sets the stage for the rest of the play. So, the introduction in Peter Pan was a narrator. The narrator explained a little of what the first scene was going to be about. Speaking of a scene, that’s another vocabulary word. A scene is a marker for smaller sections of the play, normally a change of location or characters. So, in Peter Pan, the first scene is Wendy and her two brothers in their room. Once Peter comes and takes them off to Neverland, the curtains spread across the stage so the people watching the play can’t see the people behind the curtain moving everything so they can set up the Neverland scenery. Well, that brings us to the acts. An act is a marker for major sections or changes in the play. Normally in a musical or play, there’s only two or three acts. But there’s lots of scenes; probably ten different scenes in one act or maybe more. After each scene, there’s a cue for the characters to get off the stage which is called the exit, also known as the exeunt. Every single play has these in them.
The topic that I learned a lot about closer to the end of the year was poetry. I learned so much about poetry, I think I’m ten times better at writing poems now. Poetry is literary work in which special amount is given to the expression of emotions and ideas by the use of characteristic style and rhythm. Some poems rhyme, and some make no sense at all. But as long as it comes from the heart and it’s expressing true feelings, it’s a poem. A ballad is a poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas. For example, if you wrote a poem that was three short paragraphs long, then it would be a ballad. That is a common type of poem. An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. I have never read or written this type of poem. In fact, I’ve never even heard of it before this year. So, these poems are generally sad and dark, and gloomy. These would express deep, dark feelings. An epic is a completely different type of poem. It’s a long poem, normally one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation. So these are poems that were written long ago, and they’re normally about adventures of famous people from back then. I’ve never read an epic before, but I am considering researching, and you should too. Moving on; an ode is a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular rhythm. So an ode would be more like a song. Singing odes would be very easy. A limerick is a humorous verse of 3 long and two short lines rhyming aabba, popularized by Edward Lear. Here’s what it would look like:
Long verse 1:———————————–
Long verse 2:———————————–
Long verse 3:———————————–
Short line 1:——-
Short line 2:——-
That’s the layout of this type of poem. Another is an epigram. An epigram is a pithy saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way. So these would be cool, creative poems. There are lots more types of poems, like acrostic. That’s my favorite type of poem. I know, that’s a super easy poem but it’s my personal favorite. Here’s an example:
Swimming at the beach
Underwater
Making sand castles
More lemonade, please!
Enjoying the sunshine
Racing through the sprinklers
That’s an acrostic poem (I just made this up off the top of my head). I used the word “summer,” then I wrote it down vertically. Then, starting with each letter, I came up with a little phrase to match it. There’s so much more types of poems, but now I want to talk about a famous man who wrote lots of famous and intriguing poems. His name is William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, 1564 and lived until he was 51. He was a worldwide famous English poet, playwright, and actor too. He was widely considered as the greatest writer in the history of English language and the world’s pre-eminent author. To lots of people, he is known as the “Bard of Avon,” and England’s national poet. His existing works, including collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other stanzas, some of undefined composition. His plays have been interpreted into every single major present language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. But, there is a conspiracy about Shakespeare. Some people think that William was not the actual writer of these outstanding poems. The conspiracy is that there is an unknown author who wrote these but gave the credit to William, or William took all the credit. No one knows if this is true or false, but there’s evidence on both sides.
This year was full of fun, learning, and reading. Definitely reading! I read a total of twenty books this year, some being ones that I really liked, and some being ones that I could care less about. But genres, drama, and poetry are the three that I really think will come in handy in the future. If I become an author, this information about genres will just swing back like a boomerang! If I become an actress, then everything I learned this year would be super helpful. And if I end up having the passion to write poetry, then this will definitely come in handy. This class was very fun for me, and I hope next year will be great too.
dance247 