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.
Emily, I completely agree with your view on Foster's Powerpoint! It was boring, yet, informative. Biblical and mythological references ARE very common in literary works and the media. However, don't forget that the authors allude to such stories to emphasize the point they're trying to make or generate personal responses from the readers. Since they're so ingrained in our culture, those stories are more than just something to reference to! :) Nicely done! Applauses for taking less than two seconds to type out Didls. Even though Didls makes our analyzing-a-literay-text-life easier, I think it makes our lives harder because great texts allow for multiple readings and examinations. Yay for doing more of those in the future!
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