Through the summer and the first week of school, reading
critically is the most important tool that I have learnt. While reading
Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I realized that “reading”
doesn’t just mean looking for prompt but instead you must look for hidden symbols
or motifs. While reading Chapter 22: He’s Blind for A Reason, You Know, I had a
flashback to my years as a freshman. I remembered reading The Miracle Worker and filling out papers about the plot without realizing any themes. Helen
Keller represents the traditional meaning of blindness: lack of intellectual
and moral understanding with her temper tantrums and poor social habits,
whereas Anne Sullivan represents the irony of a blind person who can truly
“see” others like Helen with compassion, unlike most sighted people. The key to
AP English is looking for the symbols and thinking critically.
After reading the Rhetorical Situation and Argument PowerPoint,
I thought back to my analysis of the “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris.
I now realize that David Sedaris considered the rhetorical situation and his
audience while making his choices in grammar, syntax, and detail. His purpose
was not write a formal college essay that would be used to inform or teach, but
instead to write in a humorous and fun way about his experiences in France and
learning French. He may have intentionally disregarded the rules of formal
essay writing as mentioned in “The Nuts
and Bolts of College Writing” in an effort to write a more casual, but engaging
essay. His seemingly random, overly detailed anecdotes about his multi-cultural
classmates and hyperbolic description of his intense French teacher contribute
to the situation’s humor, and his informal grammar and syntax make the reader
feel at ease, almost as if actually hearing Sedaris tell them the story in
person over coffee or lunch.
In addition to learning how to read critically and answer
essay questions more effectively, I have learned that knowing the names and
proper meaning of literary terms is an essential tool in understanding and
interpreting literature on a deeper level. It is not enough to know the
definitions; I must to be able to use them and pick out when they are used in a
work of literature as well as use them in my own writing. I have not mastered
this skill yet, but I hope that as we work through the course I will become
proficient in identifying and applying these literary terms in our readings and
my own essays.
I have learned a significant amount
of material in just the first week of school. However, I will need more
practice using the rhetorical situation, writing an effective argument, and
mastering the AP English vocabulary, and I am excited to do so.
Saloni, I also found that I missed a lot of important symbols in the novels that I have read in the past after reading "How to Read Literature Like a Professor". I agree with you that one of the keys to AP Lit is looking for symbols and thinking critically. I like how you tied one of the things you have learned, like the Rhetorical situation, to an assignment we had to do for this class over the summer (Sedaris essay). That just shows how much we learned in a short amount of time. As for the literary terms, I, too, need to work on them. I think that when we really understand all of these terms, analyzing novels that we read in class will get a lot easier, and we will be able to have a deeper meaning of the text.
ReplyDeleteSaloni--I was really pleased with your point about Sedaris and how he did such a good job of the rhetorical situation into account. I didn't quite know how to phrase my opinion that the rhetorical situation for Sedaris' essay was altogether different than the intention behind writing an essay with the rules in College Writing. It seemed a little strange that we would compare two styles that were admittedly somewhat similar, but had two completely different intentions. This contrast, I now realize, was probably meant to tease out the differences between writing for literary analysis or argument and writing for entertainment and reflection. By judging Sedaris' work by the standards of a different mode of writing, we must have been meant to see the contrast.
ReplyDeleteI think you make a great point when you explained Sedaris' use of unconventional detail and syntax. Like you said, if Sedaris wanted to write an academic paper for his professor, he definitely would not include the kind of quirky details he used in his story. For me, I think he wanted to convey the speaker's own confusion by writing the story using some slightly unfamiliar elements. The "hyperbolic description of his intense French teacher" directly conveys the speaker's supreme initial fear of the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI saw a few grammar issues in your post that I wanted to point out. Instead of using quotes, make sure to capitalize and italicize all titles of lengthy books. This includes “How to read literature like a Professor” and "the miracle worker."