Maths?

I've always naturally found maths very easy. It's English and the meaning of words I really struggled with.

There is some logic behind how many people struggle with maths though. A lot of memory is needed to be able to do maths, particularly working memory. If you have difficulty in this area, it will make learning/doing maths more challenging.

I wasn't very good at English either, partly because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but also because we were never taught punctuation, we were expected to just absorb it from reading. By secondary school, the books were just so boring and old. It's surprising that someone who reads as much as I do and always did read a lot was so bad at English.

I wasn't very good at English either, partly because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but also because we were never taught punctuation, we were expected to just absorb it from reading. By secondary school, the books were just so boring and old. It's surprising that someone who reads as much as I do and always did read a lot was so bad at English.

I totally agree with you Pegg, it shouldn't, but it often is.

I think these people are missing on on some great books, but then thats thier loss. I can be as bad in someways, I alwys think that the minute somethings entered for something like the Booker prize, it means it will be unreadable. Although, to be honest I have read Hilary Mantels Wolf Hall series which is a Booker prize winner and I was almost right. It was a very difficult read, especially Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies was better, but still hard going in places. Hilary Mantell said in an interview shortly before her death that she deliberately made he books hard work to read, I don't remember why, but I remember not agreeing with her.

I remember when my daughter was a teenager and she and her friends really enjoyed all the point horror books, they'd read to each other in a sort of informal book club. Thier English teacher went mental when she found out and told them to stop wasting thier time on such rubbish and read proper books, like Jane Austin and other classics of literature. Personally I was happy that she had such an interest in books and was reading at all.

I find a lot of whats called literature unreadable and I don't understand it at all or see why something so seemingly iincomprehensible is seen as so good? I was amazed to read that many autistic girls love this sort of literature and that it can be seen as an indicator of ASC? I thought 'why?'

A lot of people don't like anything popular, purely because its popular.

TheCatWoman said:

Genre fiction is used as an insult by many to describe anything that isn't "mainstream",

It shouldn't be an insult, 'genre' fiction is just a sub-genre of fiction; which is itself a genre of literature. It's just categorisation - some may enjoy assigning an imagined hierarchy to fiction, but it has no bearing on the fact.

Genre is absolutely no bar to greatness or popularity, as can easily be seen. 

Some things I think you definately need to learn by doing rather than reading, I mean I can read a cook book, but that dosen't mean I can cook.. I think the ethos of my school was to make learning as boring as possible so as not to bother the teachers.

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Genre fiction is used as an insult by many to describe anything that isn't "mainstream", although how they make the distinction is beyond me. Sci Fi in particular often explores the grand themes of life, ethics, moral dilemas, relationships between different peoples, I don't understand why that is somehow invalid, just because it's set on another planet with or without advanced technology. Sci-Fi was exploring how we navigate near human AI interactions decades ago, when most people thought it would never happen and the idea of a computer in every home, let alone in every pocket, was so out there as to be ridiculous.

A lot of crime fiction explores a whole range of emotions and how emotions get entangled, it allows us a safe space in which explore our darker emotions.

Historical fiction allows us to gain an insight into what life would have been like centuries ago, how it smells, what was eaten, the manners etc

I think a lot of literary criticism, like art criticism is snobbery in another guise and a cover for insecurity.

I never knew there was a distinction. A quick Google suggests that I mostly read genre fiction too.

About 99% of poetry I don't get.
Why not say what you mean rather than lay it out oddly with dubious grammar and break the sentences and punctuation up. I find most less useful than a block of text would be.

I know they are trying to efficiently create an image and concept by playing with words, but it doesn't work for me.

I have always struggled with spelling, punctuation and grammar, at the moment I'm working through a key stage 3 book on English. Which is intended for 11 to 14 year olds and I'm learning a lot of new stuff.

Words all have an individual shape and meaning to me, when I encounter poetry I often don't understand it because whats a word picture to them is a mess to me. If I have some context then I might understand it a bit, there are some authors who are so far up their own backsides they've probably not seen daylight for decades, they're just way to pleaased with themselves. I agree about people coming to a consensus about the meaning of a book, ( or painting, piece of music etc), especially when the authors dead and can't tell them they're wrong, I wonder how often these so called experts actually listen to living authors about the meaning of thier work. Luckily I don't read the sort of books that would attract that sort of thing, I read whats condescendingly known as genre fiction, which isn't the same as proper fiction apparently.

I think doing a lot of reading isn’t always enough. Reading is a passive, even if you are digesting history or genome sequencing or whatever it might be. I think most of us need an active learning experience, to ‘learn by doing’.

I don't think we were taught punctuation and grammar very well when I was at school. As you say we were somehow expected to absorb it. But it was the meaning of things I really struggled with. What is the author of this poem saying with "insert quote here"? Well for one, I have no idea what that means it's just a load of random words and two how do they know what the author was saying, had they interviewed them to find out? I don't think so. It baffles me that there's a collective decision on what authors mean by their texts that people seem to have agreed upon and teach in schools but what if they are completely wrong and that isn't what the author meant at all. I think my brain may be a little too black and white for such concepts. I enjoy reading but I do not enjoy ripping apart what was meant and intended etc. I also struggle with books that get too fancy with their wording because then I really don't understand the book.