Imagine this, you’re a broke first year medical student and you’re applying for a major scholarship for next year and in order to do so you need to write a 1500 word report on why you should be selected. You begin your report with, ‘hi pls give me scholarship’. You roll your eyes, you obviously can’t send this in, nobody on earth would give you this grant. You wrack your brains on how to start, and after 40 minutes it hits you. You can’t write it, because you don’t know how, in fact, you never even took grade 12 university english.
Obviously an exaggeration, but it definitely brings the point home. No matter what career path you have chosen, you will require an adept knowledge of the english language in order to succeed. Regardless of whether you’re flipping burgers at McDonald’s or giving lectures in front of the UN Assembly, it is vital that you are able to communicate your thoughts effectively.
Grade 12 university level english teaches you many skills which you actively use throughout your university career, regardless of the classes you have chosen. For example, the main form of communication between a student and their professor is through the lectures the professors give. In grade 12 english you are taught how to analyze verbal and written pieces of literature and be able to extract the important information from them. If you’re already in university, sitting at a lecture and you have absolutely no idea on how to take notes, and which pieces of information are important well… You can definitely kiss your success goodbye.
Furthermore, most, if not all, universities require ENG4U as a pre-requisite to any course they offer. So, in order to even be considered a viable applicant, you must have taken 4U english in high school which really, shouldn’t be that much of a problem anyway. English not only teaches you how to understand and analyze writing written by some old, famous (and probably dead) men it also teaches you how to understand your peers, and those around you. As an old, famous, and dead guy once said, “peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding” (Albert Einstein) and the same can be said for success. In order to succeed, you must first be able to understand not only the world around you, but the people who inhabit as well.
It’s your last year in university, you’ve somehow managed to pass all your courses with your rudimentary communication skills, and gotten through all the presentations, reports, and briefs as well. Now, it’s time for you to get a job. But in order to do so, you first need to write a sound cover letter. You sit down to write, but before you can start a memory from 3 years ago hits you, when you tried to write an essay for a scholarship. You groan, after all these years, you still don’t know how to write because you never took grade 12 university level english.
“Life Lessons from English Class.” Her Campus. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 July 2017.
“Admission Requirements.” Admission Requirements – Welcome to Western – Western University. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 July 2017.
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