The AP Diagnostic Test was a lot of help and helped set the foundation for the things I need to work on this year. One of the things I immediately figured out was that I needed to work on taking time with reading poems and understanding as well as learning a more effective way to read them. When it came time to reading poems for our forum posts I made sure to not rush through them and over look the little things. I wanted to really understand the message that was trying to voiced. When I was analyzing Sonnet 20 by Pablo Neruda, my goal of doing this was to understand the underlying message that Neruda was trying to convey. I noticed the anaphora and verbal irony Neruda used to add to the structure as well as tone of the poem. Starting from the first line Neruda uses verbal irony "My ugly love, you’re a messy chestnut/My beauty, you are pretty as the wind" (Line 1-2). Ugly and beauty are word that addresses a different feeling so using them to describe his love wasn't something you would expect. I was able to interpret the meaning of the poem to be that there's always to sides to a person and both sides are just as important.
While reading How to Read Literature like a Professor and working on Foster's Presentation I learned that I need to be more aware of techniques that are used in literature and in movies. While I was watching the movie, She's the Man it occurred to me that it was a spin off of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I feel like after reading How to Read Literature, it has made me identify the little things like the books characters read and their message in the situation. Since college essays are something that I am working on, Harvey's The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing has many important tips that I need to incorporate. I had always thought having an impressive sounding essay is better than having simple voice. However I was quite wrong and realized that Harvey actually stressed that concision will help "...cut the fat.." (Harvey 9). I think making my essays more concise it will also make them flow better. While we discussed the Rhetorical Situation in class, I realized that the elements that make up a Rhetorical Situation in combination with the techniques from Nuts and Bolts will help me improve my writing in time for the AP test and especially college essays.
I think you did a really good job on responding to pretty much everything we did the first part of the year! Your use of specifics on how these things are helping you was great, and show you really understand the meaning behind the madness of AP Lit. It might be a good idea to add just a tiny bit more detail to a couple of the ideas to avoid having one paragraph with too many points (the second paragraph seems a little crammed). But other than that, great job!
ReplyDeleteI was surprised too when I learned that She's the Man is a spin off of 12th night. I don't think we would have seen that if we aren't taking ap lit. I like how in your first paragraph you elaborate on why you need to slow down: so that you can pay attention to detail. I also like how you gave an example in how you started noticing little details in Sonnnet 20. Your post has excellent development. the only thing to work on is the transition from talking about She's the Man to college essay writing.
ReplyDeleteI think that you understood well what we did in class and over the summer due to your use of examples of how you used the ideas and how they apply in life right now. However, I do agree with Brianna that while we did cover many topics in class, I think it would be better for you to just comment on one or two things in depth instead of trying to breeze over many concepts. The first paragraph was good on your focus and analysis of how to analyze poetry but your second paragraph seems a little too full of ideas. Quality over quantity when it comes to analysis. Overall good ideas and examples used though.
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