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This week we gave a big emphasis on the comparison of literature to pieces of art and the differences of literature and stories. Before this week I did not know the difference between a piece of literature and a story but after reading an article in class about how works of literature are made into movies the connection clicked in my mind. A work of literature tells a story but adds background and makes the reader consider missing parts, make connections that aren't obvious. A story is something anyone can make for they are more to the point and are more focused on entertainment. This thought made me think more when back to my sixth grade class, during a writing workshop our prompt for the day was to think of an object and describe it without telling us what it is. This prompt came back many times in my life for last year in my creative writing class I found myself describing what a tree was without saying "my object is a tree". When looking at art pieces we were told to not try to view the entire thing but to pick out different perspectives. This was helpful for me because unlike reading and writing I find no fascination in looking at a painting for hours. This also helped me to be more interested in art works for I could look at the piece of art in a way that brought entertainment to me. This exercise connects to reading literature (for this class is not AP art its AP literature and compositions) in the way that you don't have to view a book in every single way and not everyone will view the piece of literature the same way as you but if you're able to back up your claims then you can't be wrong. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/literary-novels-_n_3790198.html
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Looking back on this week I saw that I didn't grow through the traditional classroom style that most teachers use. But I grew by interacting with my peers trying to complete our summer reading essay. In my group there are four of us desperately trying to get a good grade on the essay; although we quickly grew frustrated for our ideas, and writing styles seemed to clash. We found that whoever was typing a sentence the other three in the group would tend to micromanage their work. This frustrated me for I felt that we couldn't get anything done. About half way through the week we found that we were able to discuss the book in more productive ways. We chose three chapters from How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster and then discussed examples from our other two books, the Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid, and The Fall by Albert Camus that relates to the chapters. I found that discussing the book actually made my understanding of the books clearer. Although it took more time to write down what we were saying, a lot of thought was put into each sentence written in the essay. I also found that being passive does not help the group or the quality of the paper. Sharing your ideas helps the whole group, for others may not have noticed an idea that I had. http://www.speaking.pitt.edu/student/groups/smallgrouptips.html I have done the same thing with every poem I have ever read, until we read and digested the poem of the week the Eagle. With all other poems I have read the poem to comprehend it and then set it down because to be honest poems just never interested me. But with The Eagle we read it many times and each time I got a different meaning from the poem. The first time I read it I related it to the current situation in our government with words such as "crooked hands" making me think of a corrupt government. The second time we read it I thought of it as an actual eagle getting weaker. But the third time I read it I connected it to a monarch or someone very influential who got to where he was by cheating. As the week went on I realized that I did the same thing with reading. I never read to get a deeper meaning from a book but to finish the book or to entertain myself. As we were working on our comparison essays for our summer reading books I started to be able to connect different symbols in the Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid and it felt as if a whole world opened up in my idea of the book. I was intrigued to see how the other people in my group were able to do the same thing. In the beginning of the week when we had to answer the questions about the both of our books we had a difficult time being able to answer some of the questions, but as the week went on we were able to go more into depth about the thoughts in our minds. http://www.fno.org/mar97/deep.html In first grade on Monday's and Wednesday's my class would have art class. The teacher would give us the idea or theme of our art project and then set us loose to do make whatever was in our minds come alive as long as they fit the bones that she had provided us as I would be sitting down in class trying to come up with my own original ideas I would glance around at my classmates ideas and come to the conclusion that I liked their ideas better and try to copy them. No one likes a copy cat and in the real world it is illegal to copy someones work without giving credit where credit is due. But the whole purpose of this blog isn't about copying but about the difficulty of coming up with an original idea. In other classes I have been asked to write essays but never have I been asked to think deeply about the essay topic that I was writing about. In my eleventh grade English class we read The Lord of the Flies By William Golding while reading it we were never given the opportunity to find our own symbolism in it our teacher simply said piggy is the brains and Simon symbolizes god and so on. I find that the best way for me to be successful in writing is for me to really analyze the texts I am reading and pour my brain onto the paper rather than pulling together an essay on midnight the night before its due just to meet a deadline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEusrD8g-dM |
AuthorLindsay is thinking in AP Lit Archives
March 2017
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