Final Phase of the Portfolio
Final Phase of the Portfolio
This school year I have read ten books including Julius Caesar, The Crucible, My Name Is Asher Lev, Sleepers, Johnny Got His Gun, For Whom The Bell Toles, The Chosen, The Hobbit, Catcher In The Rye, and Of Mice and Men (See all of I have read). This wide variety of books has opened me up to new understanding of literature. Prior to this year I was defiantly not a big reader, at all, I considered it a chore. This year I have been forced to read many of these books but by the end of the year I really did not mind it. I have learned to enjoy reading because it creates a sense of reality all in its own. In no other form of entertainment can stories be as vivid because books only give you a framework and let you imagine the rest. It amazes me I had yet to learn this in all my years before this. I believe that reading was a major weakness for me but through experiencing different forms of literature I believe it has become a strength because I am eager to read now this summer.
The next major area I feel I have a come a long way in has been in my writing. I don't think I was ever a very bad writer but I found that I could never really get into a paper if I was not interested in it. That still seems to be a little bit of a problem still but I feel I am getting better at focusing on all projects but I know I do all my best work on papers which I can truly get into. I feel my two best compositions this year have been my personal narrative and my drama on hysteria. Both papers somewhat had meanings to me, especially the narrative. It is based on when my friend lost his mother, and is even more important to me because I recently went through the same experience as my father recently passed away. The drama also comes partially from real life experience as it is about a high school boy and his relationship with the opposite sex. However, I did very well on my Research paper and my Analytical essay on The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev. Those two papers did not hold too much significance to me but I was able to really devote myself to them and turn in quality papers even though they were not as significant to me. I feel in that respect I have improved much, but I have also improved in the depth of my writing. In my drama I felt like I portrayed emotions very well, and I really was able to analyze well in both my research paper and my analytical essay.
As a speaker, listener, and viewer I feel I have only improved with the experiences I have had in this class. In English I really learned to listen to others because if anything in that class they were all smarter then I was and had better ideas then me, just kidding. Specifically during the Oedipus unit I learned to watch and listen to others as they preformed their translations. Also during that when we all preformed I felt I got a good idea of how to speak better because I had to perform to the audience.
So all in all, the conclusion, for this conclusion of the project, is that Honors English II is a class I will not soon forget because all aspects meant a lot to me. I feel it has been a mind expanding experience because I was really pushed to do work in it. If I had stayed in the college prep class the beginning of the year (I would not have been challenged and I would be much lees of a person. Some of the relationships I've built through the class are also very important to me because I was able to really connect with a few of my classmates, and a really great teacher.