Conclusion
Well it took 183 days of school for me to finally finish it. For all my work in all of my subjects and specifically English, all I have left to do is reevaluate
myself or something like that.
AS A READER
As a reader I am still "well-rounded" or an avid reader. Just look at my Reading List. This year I continued to read the type of older novels which
interested me (such as Kim, The Jungle, and For Whom The Bell Tolls). These books, as they normally did, kept my interest and gave me interesting
adventures to write about. This was especially useful for my Research Paper which I partially did on For Whom The Bell Tolls. The quality of my work
relies a lot on whether I actually care about what I am writing about. This can be seen in a simple comparison of my My Name is Asher Lev journals, in
which there appears to be interest and quality in the earlier journals, but towards the end (after having to write 9 journals), the quality disappears as my
interesting what I am reading disappears. Also, this year, I was forced to read slower in order to annotate. While this was ultimately a building experience,
it definitely pained me to read so slowly in the short run. I did not read many contemporary novels (probably not any) this year as I had intended to do,
and I seriously doubt that I will this summer.
AS A WRITER
As a writer, I can say I developed this year as I did learn how to write in many forms, the research paper being the one in particular which was new to me.
I cannot say that I learned to enjoy writing, as it still annoys me, however, it is helpful to me overall, to be exposed to as many skills as I can, during my
education. I was happy this year to be able to use my creative side in my writing (which is shown through my story from the Asher project, my drama
and my personal narrative), but became annoyed by the constant stream of journals that I had to write. While these journals were better than what I had
to write last year, too much is too much. For examples of my writing, especially my creative pieces, one can visit my Writing Page or my Journal Page.
AS A LISTENER & SPEAKER
I am an excellent listener. The reason for this is probably because I am very introverted, and not one to act or speak up. This enables or teaches me to analyze and observe the moment. I feel that I am very apt at reading people, getting inside of them and drawing conclusions from how they look, act, and any previous knowledge that I have on them. I am still not a very good speaker. While we did not do very much presentation in this year's English class, I had to do a lot of speaking in my French and Biology classes. My experience presenting in these classes just about sums up my speech abilities. In Biology, a subject in which I am very knowledgeable, I am able to speak easily because I am already prepared in my mind with what I have to say. The speech is fluid and attentive. In French, regardless of how many notecards I have prepared for my oral presentations, I still falter and stumble over my speech. Thus, if I am prepared for my speech and am comfortable with the material, my speech goes fine. But otherwise, I have a hard time lying convincingly about my comfort with the material in my speech.
AS A VIEWER
I cannot say that I have consciously grown as a viewer,but I feel that I have retained my ability to look at things from different angles and make connections that one would not normally make. An example of such is in The Phantom Menace, I figured out that the whole political side of the Star Wars heptilogy is exactly the same as the fall of the Roman Republic. Similarly, if this can be considered viewing, (which I am not sure it can be) I am proud of my analysis of the "ducks in the pond" analogy in The Catcher in the Rye.
EXPECTATIONS (WERE THEY FULFILLED?)
This year's English class was much better than last year's English class. I expected this class to be better than last year's class solely because of the Internet portfolio, which I hope to keep on doing throughout my high school career. However, this class was also better than last year (which was my expectation) because we did not spend weeks reading the same book. Often we would only spend one week reading one book (the Crucible was only read for a week, and Of Mice and Men was read for only one week). This sped up learning greatly maintained my interest in the class, something that had not been achieved in freshmen year. I had expected to have to write a lot, even though I did not want to, and this expectation was met, sadly. I had also hoped to do some screenwriting, because I thought it would be interesting to learn. While we did not do any screenwriting, the drama writing at the end of the year was close enough. Now that I look back on it, I think that we should have done more screenwriting.