Analysis is getting more shallow

[Kilwee]

I've been having this problem since the start of IB1: my literature teacher doesn't let us analyze properly. The thing is, she's trying to be nice to us and not give us too much work because she knows everyone hates it (considering we were all forced into the IB program in the first place), even though our class, with the same students, last year was much more motivated and willing to work - we actually loved discussions and critical thinking and throwing ideas around. But for whatever reason our classtime has been dumbed down to just us listening to her give us summaries and partial analyses about the books (yes, summaries, because she knows nobody wants to read the books (I actually really want to though!!)).

The result is that all of our analyses are half-assed and shallow, and several of us have agreed we can feel ourselves becoming worse writers simply because we're not having the chance to improve. Even on the rare occasion that an essay is assigned we're given a word limit of about 1500 words that we can't pass, when in the 10th grade that would've been less than half my full essay size!

Point is, I don't want to be complaining but I want to figure out how I can fix this. I start IB2 in September and I need to catch up on getting a *proper* grasp of the books we did, and figure out how to prevent this lag from happening again. I just don't know how?? I don't exactly have any essay topics of my own to work with, and with all the summer work I have I probably won't have the time to read the books ("not enough time" - story of my life ). Any ideas?