1. Reading like a professor

This book showed me the different ways authors will convey things to their readers. I simply didn’t know about how authors will try and reference other texts, or how rain and other events tend to relate to christianity. This unit showed me the complexities that are in the reading we embark on this year.

 

  1. The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing

This book taught me how to write concisely and how to not go overboard with the words. The people who read what I write don’t want to read thousands of words that could be summarized in a few paragraphs. That is the most important takeaway I gathered from this unit. Other things that I want to explore more include: flow, endings, and paragraphs. I had never thought of paragraphs as units of thought before, which is a comparison I liked a lot. I connected this with computer science in my head, thinking of a paragraph as a nested data structure. There are infinite types, but some work better than others to do the same thing.

 

  1. Essay Writing

This presentation was mostly on how to write essays for the AP Lit exam. I found the central question that we always have to answer to be the most useful thing in that powerpoint. Knowing what the grader wants is central in writing a good answer. I plan on using this statement for the rest of the year.

 

  1. Close Reading Practice

Practicing everything that we had learned by using “A Jury of her Peers” was a great in class activity. Engaging with the class made me realize the number of different interpretations there were of the exact same story and words. Applying everything that we had learned was also lots of fun. After doing this activity, I went home and re read Ender’s Game. A bunch of religious references and other bits and pieces all jumped out at me.

 

  1. All Textbook Activities

These were fun to do. I enjoyed applying all of the skills that we were learning in class to real material, stuff that was closer to the AP Exam. I felt that the poetry section was harder than the prose. In my opinion, prose has a much easier to understand plot, whereas poetry has many more interpretations than prose. Realizing the differences between them this early is something I am thankful for.

 

  1. Peer Review

We already posted our reflections on this in Classroom, but there are a few things that I realized after doing it. This assignment helped me so much with my writing skills. Having multiple students review my writing and tell me what parts they liked and disliked is something that will help me write better.

 

  1. Terms List

I have been studying the terms in class and at home for a while now. I have gone through about 50 of them, and I like to learn them everyday. Some words are ones we covered last year in British Literature. Others are completely brand new to me. Learning these allows me to describe literature much better.