So far we have focused on literary terms and understanding how to write an essay. Both these terms and the information about writing an essay are things that you can utilize to do well on the AP exam. The information about writing essays will also be useful in college and writing in our professional lives.
Actually memorizing the literary terms wasn't that difficult. However, trying to distinguish them in a passage was very challenging. In order to choose the correct term, I had to analyze the writing in ways that I'm not used to. Searching writing for symbols while thinking about the authors purpose and tone was very difficult. I fell like with practice I will be able to get used to reading poetry and literature while analyzing it this thoroughly.
When we took notes on the essay writing information, we outlined how to communicate clearly and write a strong essay. The three sections worked together to teach us to write an essay, while communicating your ideas in order to get your point across, and how to incorporate these ideas into the essay for the AP exam. Without making an effective argument it makes it much more difficult to make your point clearly. You have to organize your argument and figure out what type of argument you are making. When making this argument you have to keep in mind four essential things. Why are you writing this piece, who are you writing it for, how do you want to be perceived as based on your writing and what are you writing about. By just using the structure that was described during the Argument Slide Show you will have a well structured essay without it being written and fine tuned for the purpose that you intended. On the AP exam it is essential to know your audience and your purpose for writing the essay. The AP exam wants you to identify and point out literary devices which is why it was important to memorize the literary terms as well as be able to identify them in writing. The AP exam also requires that you write a persuasive argument which requires a proper setup and knowing how to communicate your ideas effectively.
All the things we do in class begin to seem more and more interrelated once you begin to analyze them. By merging all these ideas together, I can see how our reading as well as our writing will improve.
I liked how you responded to how you personally reacted to class material. But maybe next time try and use what we learn and class and apply it to something you have read before. Use examples to help show what you learned. Try not to just summarize what we learned.
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ReplyDeleteI liked how you talked about the techniques and terms we learned in class and how that will help us take the AP Exam. But, I agree with Megan in that you should give more specific examples of the many slides we have seen or the summer homework. What did you learn about the AP Test Essay Basics and the Rhetorical Situation slides? How did those connect with the Argument slide? What did you think about ? How did you think the Foster Presentation enhanced your literature and analyzing skills? What did you learn about the forum posts and blog responses over the summer? How did the summer blog responses help you write the blog responses that we have to do right now? I think you have a great start on this response to course material, but additional examples would be beneficial.
I think you did a great job here, Nathan! This post is very thorough, and there are no rules about what can and can't go into it, so I don't feel that I can say much about what you should and shouldn't have included. I do agree with Megan, however, that this post could benefit from a few more examples. Did you apply any of the things we learned to something you've read or watched recently? Writing about something like that might be more fun for you than just listing off what we've learned!
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