If you’re a person that has ever taken an English class, then I’m sure you recall the forced quizzes that followed reading. Quizzes on the books we read in English take the fun out of reading by forcing the readers to fixate on tiny details. I know personally that I hate being required to read something that a teacher forces you to read. This way of reading makes you retain the tiniest details of the book so your grade doesn’t plummet.
I am currently taking Honors English 9 as a semester class, and we have had to read three books and taken quizzes on portions of the books. The quizzes are on the most minute details in the book that no one pays any attention to and makes reading the book unenjoyable. The only way to ace the quizzes is to completely memorize every page of the book, which no one is willing to do, so they have to sacrifice a portion out of their grade. Freshman Hayden Kirwan feels the same way.
“I believe that the quizzes are not fair because they aren’t about how much you read the book, it’s about how much you can memorize certain topics, and I feel that it doesn’t make reading the book fun, because you’re always looking for specific details while you should just be able to enjoy reading the book,” Kirwan said.
Although most people will agree that the quizzes focus mostly on small topics, history teacher Cara Walton thinks otherwise.
“Although the quizzes focus on rather small details in the book, [the class] is an honors class and this helps prevent students from being able to use sites such as SparkNotes and Cliff Notes,” Walton said.
Although focusing on small details prohibits students to use sites summarizing books, I do not feel that the quizzes we take on the books we read in English are fair because I feel we should be able to read the book out of enjoyment rather than having to re-read pages several times over to get every small detail that’s on each quiz.