I have made great progress this semester in AP Literature class. We engaged in an enormous amount of group work to collaborate on presentations regarding different topics and styles of literature, such as fairy tales, mythology, single poems, and comparison/contrast poems. In addition to this, we maintained a relaxed attitude when working by incorporating presentation techniques such as music videos, physical representations of a symbol, and tweets highlighting the humor in each work. While the presentations were enjoyable and enhanced cooperation within our group members, occasional benchmark essays and prompts retained a sense of individuality to represent the progress we were making independently.
Initially starting the year with only limited experience in forming effective thesis statements and identifying complexity in literature, I have improved upon my ability to possess an open-minded attitude when considering the perspective and potential of a literary work. Indeed, the most significant learning experience for me arose from the true understanding I gathered on forming thesis statements. The group collaboration especially helped with this as I was able to gain an insight on others' thought process and analysis for the statements in what they felt best showed the complexity of the work. Prior to this semester, I had never realized the mosaic nature of a thesis sentence and most certainly had not thought of splitting the description into two or three parts. This is perhaps due to the method I have been taught in previous english and writing classes in which a single sentence thesis is supposed to be simple, straightforward, and argumentative all together.
Having experienced this specified training for an entire semester, I now feel relatively confident in my skills for the AP prompts primarily because of the multitudes of practice we had with both thesis construction and literary analysis in general. Specifically, the tone shifts chart was a technique that significantly developed my skills in identifying the author's purpose and effect of inserting varying tones and focuses throughout the work. However, because I am not yet confident about formulating all these aspects into an essay format (since we primarily focused on a presentation format in class), I will now need to dedicate my time to efficiently incorporating all my learned techniques from this semester into a well-developed, formal essay.
Initially starting the year with only limited experience in forming effective thesis statements and identifying complexity in literature, I have improved upon my ability to possess an open-minded attitude when considering the perspective and potential of a literary work. Indeed, the most significant learning experience for me arose from the true understanding I gathered on forming thesis statements. The group collaboration especially helped with this as I was able to gain an insight on others' thought process and analysis for the statements in what they felt best showed the complexity of the work. Prior to this semester, I had never realized the mosaic nature of a thesis sentence and most certainly had not thought of splitting the description into two or three parts. This is perhaps due to the method I have been taught in previous english and writing classes in which a single sentence thesis is supposed to be simple, straightforward, and argumentative all together.
Having experienced this specified training for an entire semester, I now feel relatively confident in my skills for the AP prompts primarily because of the multitudes of practice we had with both thesis construction and literary analysis in general. Specifically, the tone shifts chart was a technique that significantly developed my skills in identifying the author's purpose and effect of inserting varying tones and focuses throughout the work. However, because I am not yet confident about formulating all these aspects into an essay format (since we primarily focused on a presentation format in class), I will now need to dedicate my time to efficiently incorporating all my learned techniques from this semester into a well-developed, formal essay.
