So I'm pretty sure most people if not all students in high school have heard about sparknotes.com. It's usually the last minute website you search for when you didn't read your English assignment. I must admit that I have done this for a few assignments myself. Soon I realised that reading these short excerpts of material that random people put on the Internet are not helpful. They might help people decided if they like the plot of the book and help them make the decision of buying it or not. But, in my situations I would read these short summaries and go to school the next day to fail the quiz. That's because most of these summaries only told me the beginning of the story with a good cliff hanger. It wouldn't tell me much of what happened in the actual story. So when I had tests and quizzes asking what character did this in whatever chapter, I wouldn't have a clue.
There are a few reasons why reading sparknotes and or Google would be a bad idea. One is , if you have never even touched the book much less read it, how would you know that the summary you were reading was the right one?! That becomes a problem when your talking to a classmate about what happened and you have a completely different story. Another reason doing this research would be bad was if eventually you had to write a research paper on the book it self. You would want to know some famous quotes along with the page number. This way people know you can source things correctly and give your author credit for the book. A research paper may be the hardest essay every just because you never read your book in the first place. My final reason for why students should not use sparknotes and Google to "read" their books is because you may be missing out of the greatest story ever. Like when I bought the first Twilight book. It wasn't very popular and I honestly thought it was super boring and long. When I finally decided to read it and try, I never put the book down. It was an amazing story and I read every book after that one!!
So although typing in the title and getting a quick and easy summary seems harmless, it can turn around and give you major problems!
Dear Arielle,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thoughts towards sparknotes. I feel that only reading a summary of a classic book takes away from the reason to why it is a classic. But where I disagree with you is that sometimes with classic books the writing can be a little tricky to understand. I think sparknotes can be helpful to read along with the book. For example, while reading Othello I found I had a difficult time understanding what the characters were trying to say. I would read the assigned reading, and then after go onto sparknotes to read more about the parts I didn't understand. So no I don't think sparknotes is completely off limits, but just needs to be used in the correct way. That way you understand the book and are ready to write the research paper. I am enjoying your blog very much, keep it up!
--Simone