journal15

                Because the directions to this last journal were not very specific, I’m going to write what I thing is good about our class’s short story assignment and where I think it fails to measure up. Personally, I think writing a short story is a great way to end the semester. I gives you, as a teacher, a chance to see how we, as students, have bettered our writing abilities throughout the year. Writing a short story also allows the class to experience creative writing first hand. It’s not often that students have a chance to practice writing outside of lackluster reports and summaries.

                However, while this assignment has a variety of upsides, it can’t help but have a few drawbacks. One drawback in particular is that our class is forced to copy our specific author’s writing style while writing our stories. I understand that this is somewhat necessary in order to properly integrate the short story into our curriculum, but it hinders our creative abilities and makes it harder to develop our styles as young authors. Also, it can be fairly challenging to copy the style of an author accurately, even if you know everything there is to know about that author. Still, I believe the good out ways the bad when it comes to this assignment, and I’m glad to be given the opportunity to write a short story instead of another humdrum report.