I have grown a lot this year. My English skills have been worked on and fine-tuned in all areas. I feel that this year's class helped me to develop into a much better English student. When I look back at the assignments I did at the beginning of the year and compare them to my work from the end of the year, my growth is obvious. I have learned so much over the course of this year that the pieces I wrote early on in the school seem pathetic to me now.
I think I have grown a little as a speaker, but not as much as I have grown in some other areas. We did very few oral presentations in front of the class in English, but I did many in my other classes. I am more comfortable speaking in front of and audience, and I am better at organizing the presentation a little instead of not planning it at all.
I have definitely improved as a reader. I can read much faster and still pay attention to the details, which was one of my goals at the beginning of the year. I'm positive that I grew in this area because we read so many books and plays during the year. Since we read them at a fast pace, I had to learn to read fast and retain details, or I would have been very far behind! I am also better at analyzing books and identifying conflicts, themes, and character developments. This is something that I could not do at the beginning of the year.
My listening skills have improved a little. There weren't a lot of opportunities to work on my listening skills except when we were listening to an assignment or lesson. I used to drift off after listening to someone for awhile, but I don't do that anymore. From English and my other classes, my listening skills have gotten better.
As a viewer, I don't think I have gotten any better or any worse. We really didn't have many opportunities to view presentations or videos. One of the presentations we saw was when our class put on the Oedipus the King play we wrote in colloquial language with many different character personalities and accents. To see it, click here.
I have definitely grown as a writer this year in English class. If you look at a piece I wrote at the beginning of the year, such as my personal narrative, it seems very weak compared to one of the better pieces done at the end of the year, such as the play I wrote with my friend Kara. I have grown more in this area then all the other areas combined.
My strengths are reading and understanding books, and writing. This year especially, I have gotten much better at understanding the underlying messages in books. It is possible to read a book and not really understand it, but still feel like you finished the book. If you want to, you can look deeper into the book and find out what the author really wants to say. That is one of my skills. Another is writing. I am confident that I have good writing skills in all areas and types of writing that can be done. I did not feel the same way at the beginning of the year because it is a strength that I gained over the course of this class.
My weaknesses are successfully reading and analyzing a story that I do not like. If it does not capture my attention, I have trouble concentrating enough to pick up on any details. I have no problem doing it when I enjoy the story, but if I do not like it, reading it thoroughly can be quite difficult.
I expected this English class to require a lot of work. I thought that we would read a book every two weeks and have homework every night. Some of it was definitely hard, but we didn't read as much as I thought we would. We read some books very quickly (such as Of Mice and Men) and spent more time on others (such as My Name Is Asher Lev). At the beginning of the year we had a lot of homework, but once we finished reading the first three books we usually had homework two times a week or less. That part was much less harder than I thought it would be. The digital portfolios were harder than I thought they would be because they required a lot of time. There were times when I spent full weekends working on my web site. I think we should have had more class time to work on it, and we should have put the work on our sites immediately after we wrote it. I did not expect to do so many creative pieces in English this year. But we wrote a news article, a personal narrative, a play, and a translation of a play, which are all definitely very creative. I loved doing all of these because they allow the writer to be more expressive. That was a pleasant surprise, because I have not written creative pieces for English class in a long time. One thing that Mr. Luizzi mentioned was that one project he assigned was to think of a soundtrack that you would put to a story or play if it was a movie. We did not actually do this, but it sounded like a great idea. English is always more enjoyable if you are able to have fun and do something you like for an assignment.