Process Paper: APL:U1: AP Q1 Final Draft

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Process paper: APL:U1: AP Q1 Final Draft (9/28/18)

Click here first the first draft, final draft, rubric, and feedback

When I got my first draft in class, I was a bit discouraged at what I had received because during the assignment itself I felt confident putting the words down on the page. However, this rewrite was a fantastic opportunity for me to go over my mistakes carefully and see what I needed to improve on. I realized that I had made some pretty significant mistakes, such as completely missing the main message of both the poems (not realizing that Douglass and Milton were already dead and they were being idolized) and not looking closely enough at the poetic structures that both authors were implying. I thought the feedback I received on my first draft was quite accurate, which was that I wrote and expanded too much on points that were not as significant as I made them out to be. I had written far too much on a single topic, specifically how Wordsworth uses words like “fen” and “swamp” to describe the state of England. On the rewrite, I dramatically reduced the portion of the essay dedicated to the diction and chose to focus on style and tone a lot more, allowing me to talk broader and give a balanced analysis of both poems. As an example, I chose to write about how the styles of diction contributed to the tone of the poems and comparing the two poets based on that rather than fixating on the diction itself, which is quite shallow-minded. The rewrite opened my eyes to how much I missed on my first time. For example, it was difficult trying to incorporate elements of my first draft into the second because of how wrong it was. I believe that the rewrite is representative of the growth in poetry analysis I have experienced over the course of Unit 1 and I hope to expand on this knowledge more in the future.

In-Class Writing: APL: U1: Q3 Diagnostic

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In-class writing: APL: U1: Q3 Diagnostic (08/29/2018)

Click here for the assignment

Rubric:

For this in-class writing, I chose to write about “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, a required novel I read back in Humanities I. I still remembered a lot about that book because it had quite a profound impact on me, with its gripping plot and Okonkwo’s character development. I treated this assignment like writing an AP Lang paper as I didn’t quite know how Q3 for AP Lit was supposed to be written. I felt that the prompt fit perfectly with Okonkwo’s character development, which allowed me to write a fluent and coherent topic using this book. It also showed me that my organization for this paper worked as well, which means I will be using the same technique in the future. But this diagnostic also showed me what I needed to improve and get better at in the future. For example, when I looked at the suggested works on the first page of the assignment, I realized that I actually knew very little about many of the works and that I needed to work hard to familiarize myself with classic texts in order to do a good job on future Q3s and the exam itself. I am looking forward to the short stories unit, as it is a whole unit dedicated to learning about these classic works that I never really got the time or had the motivation to study before.