Student Writing Samples

Lately I have been getting some incredibly entertaining writing assignments from my students. My time with the 5th years is already drawing to a close, this is their last week of classes and five bucks says about a third won’t even show up this week (to be fair, some will be testing for University and have already told me so). Some of them are really getting the hang of this paraphrasing thing though, or at least doing more than switching a few words here and there. The following are a few of the better ones, or most entertaining.

“Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-
teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank
and stood watching the boat disappear on the black
waters of Lethe?

At first I want to say that in my opinion is the beat generation piece of crap. I don’t know but I really like reading some craftily made literary works. This poem was not also my piece of cake, but the ending is really good. Without straight word about age and characteristic of father, we could realize that his father was old man, with lot of experiences. He was “the man” who was encouraging his son. But when we read the rest of this part we sadly find out that he is already death. And the fact that he passed away is described really nicely. It is based on Greek mythology. Charon was man who carried all death to the underworld and Lethe was the river which was border between world of live people and world of those who are already gone.”


“ Paraphrases of “The Gilded Six-Bits,” by Zora Neale Hurston Page – 420
It was day. Nothing more. Joe wouldn't be coming home
as usual. No need to fling open the front door and sweep off the porch,
making it nice for Joe. Never no more breakfast to cook; no more washing
and starching of Joe's jumper-jackets and pants. No more nothing. So
why get up? With this strangeman in her bed, she felt embarrassed to get up and
dress. She decided to wait till he had dressed and gone. Then she would
get up, dress quickly and be gone forever beyond the reach of Joe's looks
and laughs. But he never moved. Red light turned to yellow, then white.
From beyond the no-man's land between them came a voice. A
strange voÍce that yesterday had been Joe's.
"Missie May, ain't you gonna fix me no breakfus'?"
She sprang out ofbed. "Yeah, Joe. Ah didn't reckon you wuz hongry."

Missie May really felt guilty for what had happened. She wasn´t able to look into Joe´s eyes because she knew, that it was bad what she had done. But on the other hand she has never considered Slemmons, the man with who she went to bed, to be better than Joe. When they were talking about him she always assured him that she cannot imagine better man than him and she gave Joe compliments. But what was the reason that leaded her to do that? It probably could be the act that showed her big love to Joe as she only wanted to gain money for her husband and herself but the way she did it is strange. That she felt guilty we can see. She knew that the following day would be different from others before. ,, It was day“- Nothing more, she expected nothing from it, there was nothing to look forward to. She knew, that she needn´t do things and obligations that she did the day before. But there is a turn. Although Joe is hurt he didn´t leave her and stay there as nothing special happened. He didn´t forgive her but wanted to give the chance to their relationship. Reading this passage you can realize that for her it is the harder situation than for Joe, to know that she hurt the man she loved. Everything changed, for example their habits that were important to them and also show the features of Hurston writing. She described in her works the lives of blacks, importance of their traditions.
The Harlem Renaissance is also known as the New Negro Movement that refers to the flowering of African American intellectual life. The center of the black writers was in the Harlem, neighborhood of Ney York City.”


"Zora Neale Hurston – The Gilded Six-Bits
His coffee cup was empty. She sprang to refill it. When she turned from the stove and bent to set the cup beside Joe´s plate, she saw the yellow coin on the table between them. She slumped into her seat and wept into her arms. Presently Joe said calmly, “Missie May, you cry too much. Don´t look back lak Lot´s wife and turn to salt.”

Back in eatonville, Joe reached his own front door. There was the ring of singing metal on wood. Fifteen times. Missie May couldn´t run to the door, but she crept there as quickly as she could. „Joe banks, Ah hear you chuckin´ money in mah do´way. You wait till Ah got stenght back and Ah´m gointer fix you for dat.“

I chose these two paragraphs, because in my opinion they show the shift in Joe´s attitude and also his love for Missy May. In the first one, she is feeling really guilty for what she had done. She thought that Joe would leave her, but he did not. So she feels grateful for him still needing her and she tries hard to be a great wife and do anything he wants to undo at least a bit of what had happened if it is possible. When seeing the coin, which is the symbol of her past actions and of the roots of their present unhappiness, she starts to cry. But he loves her so much, that he tells her not to. Joe uses the allegory of Lot and his wife who turned back when she wasn´t supposed to, and died because of it. I think that he loved her so much that he could not leave her. He probably forgave her and didn’t want her to be so miserable and sorrowful, even though he didn’t forget and wasn’t able to treat her the same way he used to.
In the second paragraph, the change happens. He definitely needed some time to reconcile with the facts, and maybe the child helped it, but the forgiveness was finally “complete”. After a long time he tied up to the old traditions, which I think was a sign, that he really loved her much, forgave her and wanted their relationship to be as it used to be. Her reaction was very happy, since she immediately reacted and kept on the old game."


"F. Scott Fitzgerald – Babylon revisited
Page 375, chapter one, line 7 to 14:
He remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, hundred-franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab.
But it hadn’t been given for nothing.
It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember – his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont.

Paraphrase:

Visiting Paris again, Charlie remembered much squandered money and his wasteful past life with his wife who is already dead. He had given so much money as notes to an orchestra for playing a single number, or to a doorman for calling a cab. Charlie had handed out his money, because he wanted to show that he is wealthy and he can afford that. But it was worth for nothing. Now, Charlie is feeling badly about that, because he is without money, his child is taken from his control, and his wife is dead. The happiness is gone, and now he is conscious of being lonely and unhappy.

This is a good example of “Jazz age”. It is the period in literature after the WW1, when new inventions and American prosperity made people wealthy. They were discovering a new traditional values and modern trends in social behavior, they started to visit night clubs, and they started to spend their money. It is also Charlie’s case. He came to Europe, to Paris, with his wife, because he had become rich, and because of advantageous currency exchange rate. He enjoyed European life, which was cheap – in compare to the American life, but he squandered much money, started to drink, his wife died. These conditions made him really unhappy and he started to drink very frequently that he was rarely sober. Then his daughter was taken from his control and he became very poor. “Jazz age” was exactly about that. It is about luxury life, fun, social life, and then a great depression, drugs and other negative things."





In my 3rd year British Literature classes we are slogging our way through the introduction-y part of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” The teacher I took over for (she went on maternity leave) concluded her section of the course with a test, as to be expected. I had the pleasure of grading about half of these. It was difficult of course because it was someone else’s test, and I didn’t always know how much depth she was looking for, even with the key. It was also helpful and inspiring though because that’s where I got the idea to spend some time on satire in the first place. Most of the students correctly identified satire as a new genre in Enlightenment literature, and Swift as one of the most well-known satirists. But when I asked them “co znamina “satire”?” (what does satire mean) they couldn’t say much more than “ironic,” which was yet another word they’ve learned yet failed to assign any meaning or deeper understanding to. Yep, another amazing example of their capacity to absorb a remarkable quantity of material but have no idea what it means, simply store it away until it needs to be regurgitated. Anyways, the 5th years may be leaving now, but I still have a good ten weeks with the rest of my students, so we are going to DO this satire thing, nice and slow too. When we’re done I am going to show them a clip from “the Onion” about wearing baby skulls (*apparently a satire about blood diamonds or something. Thank you Kehan).

Like I said, the first part was pretty rough going—Swift tends to be a little verbose, and these kids are not used to reading 18th Century English. They’re still struggling with much more basic material. In a few of my classes we just got to the part where he drops the bomb, where he proposes eating the excess infants. When I asked the students what was going on in that paragraph girls looked up at me shocked and said “Cannibal!” and some of the boys, who are usually orbiting around an entirely different planet in their minds, snapped to attention and started chuckling. This is going to be fun.




Finally, in my 2nd year English class we just took our Module 6 test on “People.” This mostly included physical characteristics, personality traits, and some good ol’ multi-part verbs because those are in pretty much every unit (did you have ANY IDEA how many multi-part verbs English has? It eats the Slovaks BRAINS!) Now, I am just teaching these kids their standard English class (GAH! Lord help them…) which more or less means I take them on a guided tour through a book, orating exercises and reiterating instructions. Even when it is not assigned though I think it is important to incorporate a good amount of writing into the curriculum, because just taking “matching” or “fill in the blank” tests isn’t going to help them attain fluency in English. Therefore, on the test they had to analyze a few pictures. The first one was actually the lady on the cover of the most recent Saint Mary’s magazine (Thank you SMC…). It was a pretty good close-up, and the kids could really explore their newly-expanded lexicon with words like “fringe” (bangs), “wrinkles,” “fair complexion” etc. For the next question I let them choose one of three photos. They had to physically describe the person/people in the picture, then speculate about what he/she/they were doing. Earlier in the year I was having a blast developing my teacher-drawing skills, but I’ve fallen out of practice or just couldn’t get inspired enough to create these images, so I used a few “star sights” or whatever those pictures that constantly-creeping paparazzi get of actors off-the-clock are called. My mom left a stash of tabloids here on her recent visit, who’d of thought publications bereft of any academic credit—or maybe any credit at all—would aid me in stretching these young minds…

The photos I selected: One was of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise watching some kind of sporting event. They are sitting together but focusing on something across from them (i.e. game). Tom looks intense, Katie has her chin resting on her hand and looks a little whimsical. Not too many kids chose this picture, but out of the ones that did only one girl (who knew who they were…) thought that it was a married couple. Most of them said things like, “they must be good friends but they are not in love,” or that maybe they would be in love in the future. They often sighted a lack of physical contact as the cause, which I guess makes sense to them based on all the hickeys and practically dry humping I’ve witnessed lately. Apparently young Slovaks equate relationships with a strictly physical meaning.

Another picture was of Johnny Depp walking around wearing blue and white striped pajamas. I think it is supposed to be from a movie set or something. One of my favorite little students wrote this:

“Picture 2: the man in the foto number 2 is wearing pyjama (pyzamo). He has shoulder-length, dark brown hair (really dark brown, maybe closed to black). He has beard and moustage too. He has type of cool style beard. He look tyred. He is wearing white blue pyjama.

I think: He is walking and thinking about what he will get on (some extra clothes) :D and he sees himself in mirror he is scaried  He look really bad. He had hard night. He is also think what his wife do, because his wife isn’t at home. She is traveling and last night she slept in a motel. He also must do some extra work in house (ex. Cook dinner, clean house) He lives in flat and in the picture he is walking over hall. This day is really bad and hard for him!”

Another one of my excellent students wrote about the same photo, saying:

“This tall man has dark brown hair in shoulder length. They are curly. He has oval face with moustache above lips and beard. His lips are not very big, but they are not very small too. Apart from lips are hidden by moustache. He has dark eyes, maybe dark brown or black. His eyebrows are like men’s. Thick and near eyes. He has darker skin complexion. He is in ther thirties.

I think he just woke up from his bed, because he is in pyjama. He only take his trainers and go out. His face show that he is cheerful and probably not bad-tempered, because his smile is real and his happiness is going out of his person. He is confident, because he doesn’t care about what people are saying about him and his clothes. He is maybe artist, because these people are crazy enough do things like he. He might think about where he is going, because of hand in his hair, what looks like thinking. For him is comfortable going out in something like pyjama and because of this crazy thing he can’t be shy—He hasn’t got a girlfriend because she never agree with his clothes, but maybe she is crazy like he. His life is good. I want to say him “bon appetite” because he might be on his way to breakfast. He is a little bit sleepy so he need a caffe.”

Finally, the third photo, and the one most of the students wrote about, was of one of the guys from “Jersey Shores” or whatever that show is called doing tricep-dips on a bench on a beach shirtless. He’s got tats, and the sun is in his face so he is scowling just a little. Aside from the slobbering teenaged girls that said little more than “he is beautiful, his muscles are so beautiful” (yeah, I took off points…) a handful of boys wrote about this picture too. Perhaps a disclaimer is necessary—Slovakia is still a remarkably homogenous society, and this includes physical characteristics as well as mentality. Racial profiling is more of a given than a controversy starter, the reasons of which are so complicated and so sticky I can’t even begin to go into them now. But basically when average Slovaks see a person with darker features he/she immediately thinks “Roma/Gypsy” and the whole laundry list of connotations that comes with. Behold…

One girl wrote this:

“That guy looks very scary for me. He must be angry. I think he is exercising because he hasn’t another thing to do. He might be in a prison yard. He must exercise every day. On his body has tattoo. I could see it because he had not T-shirt. He has only green trousers and red shoes.

He has short brown hair nice oval face but his eyes are brutal and brown. He is well-build  He could be in jail because he might have a fight with another guy from his gang…”


But wait, then there was this kid’s…

“This man look well build and really strong. He has pretty big muscles. He has tattoo on his right upper arm and under his arm. He has dark long-brown medium size hair. He has pretty big ears. He doesn’t have a beard. He looks like 18 or 20 years man.

It looks like this man is a street fighter, and he is prepairing for battle now. I think he is from some gang or something, because he has pretty scarrry tattoo. I think he was in prison too. Maybe he isn’t a gang member. Maybe he is soldier. Yes maybe he is soldier in Iraq.”

I mean, what do you say to that?! More than anything I just want to get these kids generating language (at all levels, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th year). I don’t want to intimidate them into silence with too many corrections, because sometimes getting anything out of them, let alone anything with an ounce of creativity (no matter how prejudiced…) is an epic battle. So, for now I’ll continue making a few grammatical and spelling corrections but overall KEEP THEM WRITING!