Thinking back to the beginning of this school year (which surprisingly was only three weeks ago...) I think it's safe to say that through this class, I've gained a decent amount of valuable knowledge that can be applied to my future as an English student. For example, I'm going to start with our summer assignment of reading Foster's novel. I will be honest, I did not enjoy that book at all, however through toughing it out and completing the assignment, I was able to understand the process of how to become a better reader much better than before while also becoming more open to creating parallels between stories and ideas. So overall, the Powerpoint was a great success on not only aiding me on not wasting an endless amount of time on the internet and actually keeping me informed on how to have awesome reading skills.
In addition to that, I'd just like to make a brief statement on our other assignment that included becoming familiar with both Greek mythology and the Bible. Even though I freaked out and thought that I couldn't possibly memorize all the information that was thrown at me, I was able to pull through and actually became infatuated with the stories - especially with the mythology ones. I also was confused as to why we were assigned to have these readings over the summer in the first place, but as I read on, I began to realize that both of these materials are the main sources as to what authors base their writings off of. I started noticing the endless amounts of allusions made just to these two writings and was so surprised to find out that pretty much every thing can be related back to either the Bible, or the Greek gods. It's amazing to see this occurrence through almost everything, especially media, today. So. Kudos to God. And...the Greek ones too.
The fact that we have already written an in class essay along with revised and evaluated them in the prospective of an AP grader proves that AP Lit is not or going to be a "blow off" class. I believe such experiences, along with learning about the most important elements of writing and reading, emphasizes the amount of detail and will to improve this class requires in order to become successful. I found that starting off the year with introducing the five elements of a writing was probably the most helpful thing any English student could have. By memorizing the meaning behind DIDLS (DICTION, IMAGERY, DETAIL, LANGUAGE, SYNTAX. BAM. TOOK ME LESS THAN TWO SECONDS.) it makes the readings that we have to do so much easier to interpret and helps us have a better understanding of the text. Having also to peer edit other students' pieces also offered us a chance to enhance our abilities to comprehend what makes a writer so great, and elements that can be applied in order to help them improve.
Wow. We got a lot done in this three weeks didn't we...Well, I guess I've rambled on for long enough now. But now you know what I've learned through these mere three weeks of being in AP Lit.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Open Prompt #1
1. Prompt: 2003, Form B. Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures -- national, regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character's sense of identity into question. Select a novel or play in which a character responds to such a cultural collision. Then write a well-organized essay in which you describe the character's response and explain its relevance to the work as a whole.
It is almost inevitable for a person who has just moved in from a different state or country to have an initial feeling of being out of place. The sense of struggling to fit into an unfamiliar environment and facing certain barriers that culturally collide with what one is use to certainly applies to Young Ju from An Na’s novel, A Step from Heaven. Young Ju experiences such collisions at the mere age of four after moving from her small village in Korea to America, the mysterious paradise-like land she knows as “Mi Gook”. By immigrating to America, Young Ju is placed into a different world where she is required to adapt to not only their poor economic condition and language barrier, but also transform herself into an Americanized young adult which ultimately causes her to lose her sense of self identity.
After moving to America,Young Ju begins to face many difficulties that hinders her sense of self identity. Because of her family's decision of immigrating while she was at a premature age, Young Ju grows up facing the struggles of trying to combine the Korean cultures at home with the American nationality around her. This factor consumes her young life as she grows up battling her parent's expectations of her being the perfect "Mi Gook" girl and the pressures of still remembering the country of which she came from. Young Ju's conflicting ideas of conforming to the American culture while still holding on to her Korean roots causes her to become bewildered of her self identity.
Young Ju's ethnicity also plays a large role into her family's economic decision. Due to the fact that she belongs to an immigrant family, Young Ju is forced to face hard experiences that ultimately cause her to question her depiction of herself and her culture. Young Ju's family is placed under hard economic situations which not only causes her to become embarrassed of her own heritage but also holds her back from progressing in accepting the new world around her. Young Ju so ashamed of her family's condition that she begins to isolate herself from making any new friends while creating lies in order to cover up the truth. Young Ju's loneliness and lack of confidence in America only causes her to become more lost within herself and skews her depiction of who she truly is.
The experience that Young Ju undergoes after immigrating to America was not only a cultural collision, but also one of the main causes of Young Ju's obscure sense in self identity. The changes in which Young Ju encounters causes her to grow and mature much quicker than normal and ultimately places so much responsibility on her shoulders that she is left to make a decision that will change the rest of her life. Although Young Ju's life after immigration caused her sense of self identity to become skewed and became increasingly difficult for her and her family, she was able to face the hardships which ultimately caused her to become a stronger and more ambitious young woman.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Close Reading #1: "The Egg" by Andy Weir
Click here to read this awesome story!
Alright. I have to admit that I did find this story whilst stumbling on StumbleUpon BUT I do not regret choosing to write about it for my close reading. Although this piece comes across as short and could be considered as an easy read, the message that Andy Weir tried to portray through this read had quite an impact on how I viewed life. Needless to say, it blew my mind. Okay, I'm going to stop rambling now and actually start with the analysis.
Diction/Imagery:
One of the factors that makes this piece so interesting is the style of writing that Weir has. The sentences that he composes tend to be quite short and extremely straightforward yet it still holds the capability to catch the reader's attention. Unlike most writers, who enjoy using over two pages just to elaborate the description of a pineapple, Weir gets straight to the point by including a sentence like "Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me" which paints a perfectly clear picture for the reader in a single twelve worded sentence. In other words, this is not the type of story that plays mind games with the reader and makes it unnecessarily difficult for them to picture the scenario. Weir also puts an emphasize on dialect, which composes roughly 95% of the story. This plays a significant role in the story because Weir is not trying to focus on specific descriptions of the characters, but he wants the reader to analyze them through their words and provide a different point of view between two people.
By beginning his story with the sentence,"You were on your way home when you died", Weir successfully initiates the curiosity within the reader's mind to wonder about who exactly is dead, or how they died, and why did this person even die in the first place. The story then continues in the perspective of "God" and progresses through mostly dialect between two mysterious beings. I quote God because the one in the story does not specifically mean the god that's in the Christian faith. The God Weir's trying to portray is of the generalization, or combination of all the religions within the world, an ultimate power that wields supernatural qualities that people hold faith in. This can be seen through the section when God explains to the dead man that “All religions are right in their own way,”. The man that has just died represents humanity as a whole, and his confusion in the beginning symbolizes (like it is said in the story) the fact that mankind is not yet "mature" and in need of guidance of a god to help enlighten him of his bewilderment. Weir's usage of simple sentence structures and word choice shows that his motive in writing this short story is not to specifically target any kind of age group, or class, but to allow the readers to reflect upon the relationship between humanity and religion.
Details:
Of course, one of the most significant elements of a story is detail. Weir, in this case, did not fail to describe things ranging from a "congratulatory slap on the back" to specific people of history such as Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and Hitler. These details are not included within the story just for a brief history lesson, but to prove a point. The God of the story tells the dead man that he represents everything in the universe, that he is the universe and the only one that has ever existed. The dead man, who is obviously astonished, questions this fact by using historical figures such as Hitler and the thousands he killed, Abraham and John Wilkes Boothe, and Jesus and those who followed him, to show the contrast between good and evil which can ultimately be concluded that humanity is composed of both these elements.
Alright. I have to admit that I did find this story whilst stumbling on StumbleUpon BUT I do not regret choosing to write about it for my close reading. Although this piece comes across as short and could be considered as an easy read, the message that Andy Weir tried to portray through this read had quite an impact on how I viewed life. Needless to say, it blew my mind. Okay, I'm going to stop rambling now and actually start with the analysis.
Diction/Imagery:
One of the factors that makes this piece so interesting is the style of writing that Weir has. The sentences that he composes tend to be quite short and extremely straightforward yet it still holds the capability to catch the reader's attention. Unlike most writers, who enjoy using over two pages just to elaborate the description of a pineapple, Weir gets straight to the point by including a sentence like "Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me" which paints a perfectly clear picture for the reader in a single twelve worded sentence. In other words, this is not the type of story that plays mind games with the reader and makes it unnecessarily difficult for them to picture the scenario. Weir also puts an emphasize on dialect, which composes roughly 95% of the story. This plays a significant role in the story because Weir is not trying to focus on specific descriptions of the characters, but he wants the reader to analyze them through their words and provide a different point of view between two people.
By beginning his story with the sentence,"You were on your way home when you died", Weir successfully initiates the curiosity within the reader's mind to wonder about who exactly is dead, or how they died, and why did this person even die in the first place. The story then continues in the perspective of "God" and progresses through mostly dialect between two mysterious beings. I quote God because the one in the story does not specifically mean the god that's in the Christian faith. The God Weir's trying to portray is of the generalization, or combination of all the religions within the world, an ultimate power that wields supernatural qualities that people hold faith in. This can be seen through the section when God explains to the dead man that “All religions are right in their own way,”. The man that has just died represents humanity as a whole, and his confusion in the beginning symbolizes (like it is said in the story) the fact that mankind is not yet "mature" and in need of guidance of a god to help enlighten him of his bewilderment. Weir's usage of simple sentence structures and word choice shows that his motive in writing this short story is not to specifically target any kind of age group, or class, but to allow the readers to reflect upon the relationship between humanity and religion.
Details:
Of course, one of the most significant elements of a story is detail. Weir, in this case, did not fail to describe things ranging from a "congratulatory slap on the back" to specific people of history such as Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and Hitler. These details are not included within the story just for a brief history lesson, but to prove a point. The God of the story tells the dead man that he represents everything in the universe, that he is the universe and the only one that has ever existed. The dead man, who is obviously astonished, questions this fact by using historical figures such as Hitler and the thousands he killed, Abraham and John Wilkes Boothe, and Jesus and those who followed him, to show the contrast between good and evil which can ultimately be concluded that humanity is composed of both these elements.
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