Soyoon Kim December 16, 2013 C Block

Reflection as a Writer Looking back at past essays and assignments, its not clear to me how I have developed as a writer in the first semester of this AP English Literature class. As a I take a closer look, however, I can see that I have developed myself in many ways not just in terms of how I write, but also in terms of how I learned to write for various genres and formal research tasks. In terms of how I developed myself as a writer of works of literary analysis, I have definitely gained the foundations through this class. In the first close-reading analysis paper (Paper 3 Close Reading Analysis) I chose to evaluate Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper. In my first drafts, I realized and found that I was writing the paper from a mere surface-level and had failed to identify the significance of my findings in the text. It didnt dawn upon me that whatever was not stated on paper, the reader would not understand. In essence, I learned that the reader does not have the power to infer a writers words so its the writers duty especially when interpreting literary texts to be direct in his or her interpretation. Here, I learned the importance of concluding my thoughts with a concluding sentence and not leave paragraphs dangling with uninterpreted quotations and infantile thoughts. Its like grade-school printing exercises. Crossing the ts and dotting the is are the basic habits one needs to develop before moving onto anything else. For me, Paper 3 contributed to this process and helped me better myself as a writer early on in the semester. I was able to clearly see the changes I had made the notes that I took from Paper 3 translated in Paper 4, my Paired Poem Comparison. Here I was finally able to strike at the core of the two poems messages while still getting my point across. A quote I particularly like from my concluding sentences is In this way, Zamora strikes the core of gender issue for women with a resonating force, combining all of these elements to create a direct, unrestrained tone from which readers can derive her message. I was flattered and even more pleased to see that an excerpt of this essay was taken to be used as an exemplar in one of our class discussions on how to write effective poetry analyses. That moment

Soyoon Kim December 16, 2013 C Block

truly solidified a confidence in myself that I never really had in this class and truly made me proud to have come this far in AP Literature writing. Though not a major assignment, the Annotated Bibliography for the author study taught me the key research writing skills for any in-depth research assignment. I had forgotten much of what I had learned in AP US History last year about writing annotated bibliographies so this was a perfect opportunity for me review what I had learned previously and make it even better. Through the process I learned the importance of paraphrasing well, making the words into my own, and truly pinpointing the meat of each sentence that I was reading. I also learned the proper use of citation formatting and how to properly use search engine and citation machine tools with the help of Mr. Andersons lectures. As I writer, I was also able to develop creativelythe favorite poem project and the original romantic poem were some of my favorite assignments. They were a great way to internalize what we had learned from the poetry unit and was a nice surprise to the mix of formal essays and papers that we were working on at the time. I have also developed in terms of the attention to detail as I finalize and format my papers. When I first wrote my Writing Story for this class, I look back and shake my head at how I have formatted the page. Now the extra spacing in between paragraphs of a double-spaced paper look foolishly naive and unprofessional. I also learned to give each and every assignment given to me a unique title instead of the boring old Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3, etcetera. Under the guidance of Mrs. Brayko and my peers, I have definitely learned much and gained a tremendous wealth of information to develop better habits as I move on and continue to write for various assignments. Through the course of my development as a writer in AP English Literature, I hope to be able to apply this knowledge of writing skills in other classes as well and my life beyond high

Soyoon Kim December 16, 2013 C Block

school. Thankfully, I have learned and gained a variety of useful tools already in the first semester so I cannot imagine nor fathom what other great things will come my way in the second.