Once again, we have covered a lot of material in the past month. Lately, we have been focusing on tone. One of the things that we have been doing since the beginning of the year are tone word challenges. I like doing these challenges because they help clarify some of the words. I have heard of most of these words, but I don't know what all of them mean. I now know the difference between "ambivalent", "apathetic" and "indifferent." I used to think that these words were all interchangeable with one another, but when Holmes explained how they were different, it became clear to me how they were actually very different.
We also worked on tone with the reading in our textbook. Chapter 4 and 5 were helpful because they provided examples of how tone towards a specific subject can be very different. I thought it was interesting to see all of the different feelings towards America and the American Dream.
Speaking of the American Dream, we wrapped up our discussions on The American Dream and moved on to The Death of a Salesman. Now that we have discussed several aspects of The American Dream, everything is a lot clearer now and I kind of like it. When we first started with this play, I didn't like it because it didn't make any sense and had a very strange style. I think my problem was that when I'm reading, I'm used to just looking at the plot and nothing else, however, this doesn't work with The American Dream because it's written in such a bizarre style and the focus of the play isn't the plot. When I stepped back to look at the writing style instead of just the plot, everything became much more fascinating. With The Death of a Salesman, I am trying to not focus on the plot so much and to instead, notice the way the play is written.
I think those tone exercises are really helpful too! I've learned about tone before in other Lit classes, but what I like about what we are doing here is that Ms. Holmes is giving examples of the tones. That really helps distinguish between some similar ones.
ReplyDeleteAfter working with tone so much in class, it was pretty easy for me to see the different tones that we looked at in chapters 4 and 5 in the textbook. Those pieces that we looked at from those chapters tied in nicely with the book that we were working with, The American Dream, too. I also thought that the discussions helped a lot. I didn't really like it that much either at first, but after I understand everything from it, it isn't bad! After having practice analyzing The American Dream, analyzing Death of a Salesman wasn't that bad either!
I think the tone exercises we do everyday will be very useful for the AP test. I have a pretty good understanding of tone but I often struggle finding a word to describe it so this will be beyond helpful for me. I think that how in-depth we go with the words each day really helps us distinguish between the similar tone words and applying them to everyday things helps us practice using them and learning situations in which they would apply. I also thought that it was fun and interesting to do the activity with how the characters of the American dream would view the poems we read. I also think it is amazing to see how my understanding of The American Dream changed from the first read-through to the end of all of our discussions. It is day and night and I really think that the style of the play is unlike anything I have read before. Knowing about the style of the play was really helpful in understanding the play itself and I think it is a good goal to understand the style of the play.
ReplyDeleteYou do a really good job with both explaining what we've done in class and adding your own thoughts and feelings about it. You even remembered "ambivalent," "apathetic" and "indifferent"...I haven't remembered any of them, quite frankly. I also really liked your point about The American Dream's plot; you can't focus on the plot, because it becomes too confusing and random. I hadn't noticed before that you need to take a step back in order to take it all in, and you did a really good job of wording that. Don't stop doing what you're doing! Everything's perfect.
ReplyDelete