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Old 03-23-2002, 08:40 PM   #1
Xantar
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Quote:
Originally posted by GameMaster
It sounds like something an A student would do.
Unless you're an A student, shouldn't say what A students would do. Not to toot my horn, but I was an A student in high school, and reading my teacher's papers in order to adopt his or her style is definitely something I would not have done.

I have no problem with reading those papers in order to see the kinds of insights my teacher would want me to make. After all, you don't have to read papers to do that. You can just ask the teacher, and if he or she is a good teacher truly interested in the progress of students, he or she will give you some honest and helpful advice.

However, I don't think reading your teacher's Master's Thesis for the express purpose of adopting her style is a good idea. The fact of the matter is college and graduate papers are very different from high school papers (this is why the posting styles of college students or graduates is so different from the styles of high school students). And it's not just because college students use big words and nice sentence structure. The underlying thinking in the papers is just different. Unless you are some kind of high school prodigy who thinks like a college student (in which case you should be getting an A in the class already), you won't be able to recreate the writing style of a college student and especially not the writing style of a college graduate (such as somebody who has written a Master's Thesis). You would only be able to make some kind of imitation, and any discerning teacher will be able to see that.

College is as much a step up from high school as high school is a step up from elementary school. Elementary students won't gain much by trying to imitate the style of high school students, and in the same way, high school students won't gain much trying to imitate college students. If you want to do well in your English class, ask your teacher for pointers and read papers written by other high school students who are doing well. It will prove to be far more helpful. Listen to the people who are telling you to keep your own style. They have the right idea.
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