This week, we talked about vocab, the rhetorical situation, how to write an AP Lit essay, and Arguments. Although the vocab was a bit annoying to learn, I think that these words will definitely help me in the long run. In my Contempt Lit class, we are reading About A Boy by Nick Hornby and I noticed some words that were on our vocab list. I felt so proud of myself when I understood the sentence: "Will had met Barney before, and knew for a fact he wasn't lovely, so he chose to ignore the non sequitur."
Over the summer, we read The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey. One of things he stressed was keeping the writing concise and not filled with useless words. While I was studying for the ACT, the test prep book mentioned many of the ideas that Harvey included in his book. For example, one of the strategies the prep book talked about was choosing the shortest answer on the english section. It said that if multiple answer choices are saying the same thing, but one is shorter than the others, the shorter one always wins. I recognized this concept from Harvey's book, which focused on how to display ideas in the shortest, most concise way possible. This really helped me because on previous tests, I have gotten confused when all the answer choices sound like they can be correct and I can't decide which one is the right answer. Another concept that the ACT prep book covered was the best way to write and organize the essay. ACT graders often look for good organization in essays. Some of the tips in the prep book were similar to the ones from the powerpoints we looked at. These helped me understand how to structure the paragraphs and how to take into consideration the rhetorical situation.
This is a great analysis of what we did in class. I never thought about how Harvey's techniques are useful for standardized tests. The similarity would make sense, however, as the academics who praised the ideas in Harvey's book on college writing would be the same type of people who write questions for standardized tests like the ACT. When I went through a prep book for the ACT, I remember how, as you said, it emphasized the idea of "essay organization". I agree that our reading made me much more conscious about my writing, even down to how I structure my paragraphs. I also like how you provided a specific example of how you found our new poetry terms in your own personal reading, as I'm sure that helped you to internalize their meanings.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the standardized test comparison you make in this post. Harvey discusses many of the things my SAT guide told me. So for this reading it was a great review of concepts and what should be done and what should not be. As per the terms, they were a slight bit annoying to me as well. Not only we had to memorize them, we had to use them. This may sound obvious that when you learn a new word you should know how to use it in practice. In the context of these words though, on first and successive tries, they are difficult to use in practice. At the time of the terms test, I still did not understand how to use a few the definitions in practice. But as you stated, they will help in the long run.
ReplyDeleteAs you discussed Harvey’s book and how you related to it, what did you think about Foster’s book? His book enlightened me on many aspects of reading a book in ways I could not imagine. What did it help you understand? What new things did you learn from reading his book?
Natalie, the connection you draw between Harvey's book and standardized testing is something I never would have considered, and it just goes to show how we can use the things we learn in this class in many different contexts. After drawing those connections, it will help strengthen the memory of both things and make you a better standardized tester (for reading and writing with time constraints), and help you on both the ACT and the AP Lit test, which I had thought was one of the objectives of these blog posts. The recursive learning that Ms. Holmes had discussed in class is really evident in this response.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of the vocab... all I can say is that I hope you still feel positively about the experience in retrospect. I thought that it was a good lesson in study skills to have us take that test without having adequately prepared. I wish you luck on the next vocab test!