Throughout this first week of AP Literature, our class has learned literary terms, the rhetorical situation, how to write arguments, and gone over how to approach the AP Literature test. All of the words seemed familiar. As we were learning the literary terms, I began to realize how many times I had seen them in literature and in writing, but had never thought to look up what they were by definition. For example, when reading Macbeth last year in British literature, I never thought to look up the definition of the famous line "Fair is foul and foul is fair". This famous line is a paradox, meaning it at first glace seems to be self-contradictory, but contains some validity to it.
Watching the AP Literature essay prezi, I learned a lot how to begin approaching the AP Lit essays. They named an lot of things that were very obvious and basic, yet I had forgot to think of. I thought the examples of what not to do (like the tour guide and magpie) were very obvious, yet probably very common in the AP test essays. Even in my AP US History class, Mr. Wood could not stress enough that we could not simply state facts or evidence without elaborating on why it relates to our thesis. The tour guide example reminded me a lot about that. This shows that these examples can carry on into other classes.
I hadn't even known what a rhetorical situation was until I watched the presentation on it. I really enjoyed watching the presentation on it because it is something that I can use frequently in literature. Often times, when writing papers, people forget to consider who they are writing for. This is really important because who we are writing to can change how we write what we do. Reading about considering who we are supposed to write for made me think of how different a letter to a friend can sound vastly different from writing to your boss.
When learning about the Argument, I thought of all the times that I had written persuasive essays for classes. Never had I even thought of appealing to logos, pathos, or ethos. I had only thought of a clear and concise, logical argument that would hopefully swoon the reader with my intelligence. This also made me think of AP World, where getting straight to the point was the most desired essay, not how you presented your facts.
I was surprised by how much the things we had learned this first week of school tied in to almost every other writing that I have to do in all my classes. I had noticed these terms a lot, but had never even thought to look at what they meant. I'm excited to see what new things I learn the upcoming weeks in AP Literature, and how else I will be able to tie it in with other things in my life.
Hey Joyce,
ReplyDeleteYour examples about the things we learned from the AP Lit Prezi and persuasive essays also reminded me of previous classes like AP World and APUSH. I had never really taken any thought into how we were writing these essays.
One question I have though is if you learned anything from Foster's book. I happened to learn how to notice so many different things in literature and found that book to be very insightful and useful.
Good Job! Matt Ko
When I first saw the tour guide/magpie metaphors, I thought to myself, "that's so obvious I would never have done it myself." Ironically, I caught myself doing it while I was writing essays just a week or two later. It's really an easy trap to fall into, so don't let the obviousness draw you into a false sense of confidence!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I think much of the difficulty, at least for myself, comes from an excessive amount of summarization practice in early schooling. It has become such a habit to be a tour guide that we can do it without even thinking.
I, too, had never considered guilting someone into agreement as a form of argument; neither had I thought "persuading with a gun" to be a form of argument either.
Try not to mix AP World with this class too much. Like you said, in WHAP, the point is to get to the point--bonus points if you throw it in the reader's face so (s)he can see it better. Here in AP English, how you present yourself if a part of the rhetorical situation, so we have twice as much work to do in our essays as we did in WHAP.
Noah Symanzik
PS Speaking of swooning readers with your intelligence, isn't that what people try to do when they use pompous writing? ;)