Poetry and Prose Pre-Test: Jumping into AP Literature & Composition

9/6/2019

Now that you have jumped into the "deep end" of the pool, reflect a little on your performance on the prose and poetry response essays. You can think of these baseline essays as a whole experience or you may separate your experiences.

Once you have paused to reflect, compose your thoughts in a brief letter to me that illuminates this experience. You can make predictions for the year, but you should not feel that these responses will be reflective of your whole year in AP Literature. I have found that the majority of my students will grow and evolve as thinkers and writers quite a bit from September to May. Tell me how you felt, what areas were your strengths and which need more focus. Tell me about any steps you plan to take to improve (and, believe me, ALL writers can improve!) and how your future writing self will look.

Try to finish by the end of the period, but you may certainly continue at home.

Please use a name that you select as your nom de plume and be sure to add word count.

Expectations:
200-250 words

Tianna

9/6/2019 11:28:13 am

I love life

Amahia Willey

9/6/2019 11:29:41 am

Dear Mrs. Russel-Williams,

For the essays I felt rushed and and that made it hard for me to relax and just let myself write. I tend to overthink things. I do poorly at conclusions and a tiny bit better at intros than I am in conclusions. When I do an essay I need to have a good idea of wehat im doing or what I need to do beforehand so I can put out my best work. I am also very hard on myself so i could have done decent but because i'm so hard on myself I will think I did poorly. On the other hand, sometimes I think I did pretty good and it could end up being the worst. I plan to become more organized because I tend to become a bit frazzled when things are unorganized, and i'm an unorganized person so it's not a very good combination. I'm a very shy and quiet person and tend to be by myself even if I don't want to be. I struggle with that a lot especially if I feel uncomfortable or like I’m not close with anyone in my class. Ways I could improve next year would be to not second guess myself so much.

Sincerely,
Amahia J. Willey

clownuniversity

9/6/2019 11:31:12 am

I feel that my performance on both essays were poor as I was hesitant on what to write and I could not gather my thoughts well enough to support my points with evidence clearly. I felt unprepared because I did not remember many as many literary terms as I should have in the moment of writing the essays. After this experience, I should be able to refresh my memory with important terms or devices to be able to work through this class.

Red Queen

9/6/2019 11:40:18 am

I felt very bad because I don't know how to write an essay for an AP English exam. I haven't taken AP Comp so I feel like my writing skills aren't that good. My areas of strengths are explaining a quotes and finding them as well. My weaknesses is understanding what I am writing about. I'm not able to back up a thesis through the whole essay. Also I suck at writing transitions in my essays.Areas that I need to focus on is my grammar mistakes and adding my citations for every quote that I quote on my essay. I need to focus on organizing my thoughts and planning out my essays. On the pre assessments I just put gibberish and I don’t want to do that on my AP Exam. My plans to improve as a writer is when I have an essay due I will ask questions about my essay. I will ask if my thinking of a quote is right and ask for help after school. How I see my future writing will look by the time in May is to being able to write an essay that is well organized and structured well. I hope that I do well in your class and not failing.

Sigmund Zeppeli

9/6/2019 11:40:41 am

I thought I did fairly well when writing the essays. The analysis of literature and works were my strong suit especially when doing timed writing last year. I expect myself to get better with time and have more complex and centered analysis. I think if i was to focus on certain themes and ideas it would better formated.

Midnight4eva link

9/6/2019 11:46:55 am

the prose n' poetry was actually a delightful surprise, it challenged my thought process by having challenging words and it was like unlocking this code for when you finally understood it. Analyzing both novel and poem was like understanding math, once you get it you feel like you know everything and start seeing the world in a new way (until a new topic comes haha). What i enjoyed the most had to be the prose section, the way Charlotte Bronte used "18" and love as a symbol was so eye opening for that her thoughts on adulthood were similar from the 1800s to today's society. It really sets perspective that some big factors in losing innocence can be universal to any age of society. AP Lit seems like a class i will really enjoy, and will hope to improve on writing skills. In order to improve i will hope to write some short stories of mine own and eventually finish a novel someday.

Yours truly,
midnight4eva

John Doe

9/6/2019 11:50:26 am

Both the narratives (prose and poetry) were so beautifully written, however, when it came to write about them, I was at a loss for words. I had difficulty feeling as though I could find enough literary techniques that the author used, as well as creating a cohesive essay. That's actually one of the things that I hope that this class will enable me to do. As for my strengths, I really did not have trouble being interested in the writing piece. I believe that when I have a better understanding of Literary Techniques, then I'll be able to focus better because of the enjoyment. To improve my skills, I will try to observe these literary techniques throughout my future reading material.

Rosie

9/6/2019 01:30:17 pm

Dear Mrs. Williams,

I feel as though I did pretty well on the prose timed writing just because I’m used to always analyzing something of that nature in my classes. However, for the poetry writing, I felt like I had a good idea of what to write, but I didn’t necessarily have the practice/experience of analyzing a poem in order to do well on this. I felt like I ran out of things to say for the poem because I immersed all of my ideas under one big topic. I found myself at a loss for words, literally, because I explained things in little depth. I wasn’t too concerned about how long we had to complete it because I’ve had experience with timed writings in my past AP classes. Since it is the beginning of the year, I have to get used to it as time goes on. Hopefully I will get better at analyzing quotes and/or passages. Also, I hope, in the future timed writings, that I have a better vocabulary instead of just the simple words. With more experience in the poetry field and getting used to the timed writings once again, I should be able to see that my mind has become accustomed to thinking outside the box and I have evolved as a thinker as you say.

From, Rosie

Word Count: 225

Konadu Maame Pannny

9/7/2019 08:37:32 am

For my first ever timed writings I felt I did pretty well, though with the prose I found it very hard to write about the things I was asked to write about. I believe there is room for improvement for me because this my first ever AP writing class, and that in itself is a whole different beast from AP science classes and AP math classes. It's only the beginning of the year and their is certainly more for me to learn, but I am ready and here for it.

Lucia Ayan

9/7/2019 03:25:28 pm

I personally found the prose essay very interesting and enjoyed writing about the topic at hand. I think I did good when it came to finding out what the author was talking about and what point they were trying to get across. The other essay was a completely different story, I have very little interest in poems and find then hard to decipher. I spent the majority of my time annotating and rereading the poem in order to find something to write about in my essay, therefore leaving me with a short intro and barely one paragraph. In the future I think I will struggle the most with those essays due to lack of time and lack of understanding. After not writing all summer I was a little bit rusty, but practicing many writing techniques last year in AP Lang helped me anticipate the timed writings and how to manage my time more efficiently in the first essay. The second was a hot mess. :( I think in order to benefit my writing in the future, I would like to see how to more easily decipher poems, therefore fixing my issue of not being able to put together my ideas. If I had understood the point that the author of the poem was trying to get across, I think I would have done a lot better on the second essay.

November Snow

9/8/2019 08:13:34 pm

Dear Mrs. Williams,

When I started writing those essays, I felt very uneasy. I did not know exactly what I was expected to write about and I am not sure I followed the directions. I tried my best and I’m glad I did not totally freeze up and quit. I am excited to learn exactly how I should write these essays, and I feel more confident that I will know what should be in my essay. I’m hoping that the new rubric is easier to follow than the previous one and I’ll be more comfortable in my knowledge of how to get a higher score.

For this year, in AP Lit I do hope I evolve as a writer as you said, but I am also hoping to be exposed to a more diverse variety of literature. When I was a freshman I felt like my progression as a writer was very stagnant, but, sophomore and junior year, I felt were great times for me as a writer. I’d hate for senior year to be like freshman year all over again when I dreaded English class. I am trying to have a very optimistic attitude for the year ahead, especially when all I can think about is graduating.

bananaboat

9/8/2019 09:55:02 pm

While I don't think I did terrible on those essays, I don't think it was my best work. I felt as though I was pulling my analysis out of thin air, which is fair to say because literature is ambiguous. You can say that a comb on the dresser of young African-American girl is a symbol of black people assimilating to western beauty standards along with the death of black culture and no one could argue you because literature is open to many different interpretations. In addition, 9 out of 10 times the author is did so there's really no way to know he significance of many details within literary work. With that being said, I felt like I was really reaching for the stars in some of the claims I made in those essays, but at the same time I was able to back it up so overall it made as much sense as it could, given the circumstances. I also work well under pressure so it was interesting to see what I was able to produce in that span of time. I feel that my analysis was sufficient but everything about my essay was messy because I was so focused on getting it done than how it flowed.

Regarding my future in AP Lit., I'm optimistic. By no means do I believe I am a bad writer, but I know that there's plenty of room for improvement and I'm glad to be in setting where the standards are high and there's something to work towards. I may regret saying this in the future but I want to be humbled. I know there's so much to fix with my writing and I need someone who's not used to seeing mediocre work to dissect my papers and momentarily make me regret taking the class. I would like to write a book in the future, which is why this is so important to me.

Word Count: 323

Suprise!

9/8/2019 11:16:52 pm

After finishing the prose and poetry response essays, I realized I need a little fresher on how to analyze and elaborate on an authors writing techniques. At first I was struggling to come up with ideas, but I quickly remembered doing these same exact type of prompts last year in AP Language, so those skills did come in handy. When it comes to these essays prompts, my main goal is to manage my time more efficiently. I have so much to say when it comes to these prompts, but I either get carried away and I start to rumble for a couple of paragraphs or run out of time (lol). Also, another goal of mine is to stop overthinking and just let my ideas flow. When it comes to analyzing a piece of work, I always second guess my self and never feel like I'm analyzing the text 'correctly'. I just have to keep in mind moving forward, literature is full of different ideas and meanings and it's okay to interpret things differently. Hopefully taking more practice essays throughout the year will not only help me become a better writer, but it will also prepare me for the AP exam.

Word Count: 200

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