I'm glad that we have finally finished reading plays and moved on to novels. I enjoy reading novels a lot more than plays. Ceremony seems like an interesting book so far; it is different from any other novel I have ever read, mixing a lot of different styles and techniques. It is quite confusing and skips around between multiple stories, but even in the first half (I'm on about page 120 as I write this), the individual stories are starting to come together and make sense. I am enjoying certain parts of the story a lot, but other parts seem to drag a little bit, mostly the memories about herding cattle with Josiah. The flashbacks to the war and the scenes are the bar, however, are exciting.
Besides starting the new book, we have spent some time in class practicing writing. I think this is something we should have been doing a lot more frequently throughout the year, because it seems like a big deal now that we are doing it the first time. Judging from the examples we saw in class on Friday, the AP graders seem to be looking for specific things in analysis when they are grading. How well the essay is written in terms of vocabulary, organization, and sentence structure seem to have little to no impact on the grade the essay receives, which I think is a bit silly considering this is partly an english class. I am struggling a little bit with evaluating my own essays; I have no way of knowing at this point when I should feel confident about what I have written. Hopefully we can get more feedback on our writing before the AP test.
Hi Greg,
ReplyDeleteI agree that moving on to novels is really nice. I thought that Ceremony was an interesting novel, though I thought the random moments in which the scenery was described for 2 pages was what dragged on the most. I also think that we should have done more writing prep during the year. I honestly thought that my essay was awful, and I wish that we had done more previously so that I could feel more confident in my writing during this part of the year.
Greg, I agree about the AP test situation. I feel like my writing abilities have gone done quite a bit since last year because we wrote more. However, I do feel like we are way more prepared for actual college courses with the annotating and managing everything on our own time. I'm a little bit nervous to see how well it goes, but in the end I think we are pretty prepared for college. Also, I kind of like plays better than novels, I think the main reason for that though is because when we read plays together as a class it forces me to be on a schedule and keep up with the plots. I found myself staying up reading pretty late some nights when we started novels. Good luck on the AP exam!
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