When I first walked into Ms. Nagi's 11 AP Language and Composition class, I knew it was going to be a long year, especially after hearing horror stories of in class essays every week. Of course, those first few essays were definitely a challenge, but as I was forced to write more and more, I got used to the demanding workload set by the class. In order to fully express the improvement that I have made as not only a writer, but also a student, I must share some examples of writing from both the beginning and end of the year.
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| The Nonfiction In Class Essay Rewrite on the summer reading |
As you can see from the image above, one of the major issues with my writing that I was struggling with was expanding upon my analysis and utilizing evidence from the text to its fullest potentials. This failure to go further and deeper into my analysis resulted in an overall lower quality of writing. For some reason, I kept summarizing and repeating what the evidence said instead of thinking about the author's purpose and why they chose to use that specific rhetorical device. Although this early piece of writing is a rhetorical analysis essay, the same issue occurred with my earlier synthesis and argumentative essays as well. Perhaps it was the stressful environment of having only an hour to write a cohesive, well-planned, thoughtful essay, as I was constantly stressed and unable to think about the author's purpose in a deeper meaning. Thankfully, due to Ms. Nagi's constant barrage of essays, I was able to pull myself up by the bootstraps and improve upon this weak area.
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| 2011 AP Practice Argumentative Essay |
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As the year progressed, I encountered more and more essays, which initiated the fight or flight response. I chose to fight and endure the dreaded day where we had less than 60 minutes of writing in the early morning. Thankfully, I grew as a writer and my essays included more in-depth analysis rather than mere redundant summary. All the hard work that I have put into learning and developing high quality analysis that leads to deeper meanings has truly paid off, and I feel much more confident in my abilities as a writer when compared to the beginning of the year.
AP Multiple Choice/Writing Log
Overall, 11 AP Language and Composition with Ms. Nagi has definitely taught me how to improve myself as a writer and how to formulate and organize my own ideas and thoughts about a wide variety of subjects ranging from the benefits of multilingualism to the essential skill of artifice into a cohesive, strong essay. Although I definitely did not enjoy the mountain of work behind this class, it has clearly expanded upon my world views and opened up my mind to the plethora of information in human society. 11 AP has taught me that one can argue about literally anything. Of course, I enjoyed the many times throughout the year in which we had fun and laughed about silly things such as one student's remarkable submission of an "essay" about polite speech involving the interactions between hypothetical persons A and B. Also, the thought-provoking topics that we have discussed in class have opened up my mind to unique and novel opinions and views that I myself would never have thought of. The many works of literature read over the course of the year have definitely impacted me as well, considering that they were pretty good reads with exceptionally profound messages hidden within them. Food Fridays were also a bonus, although drinking Mountain Dew at 7:30 in the morning is not exactly the best for one's health and well-being. Although 11 AP did not completely remove my disdain for writing essays, it helped build up my confidence and strength in writing so that an in-class essay isn't the end of the world, but rather just another hour of hard work to get through. This old adage sums up this class perfectly:
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
