Response to Course Materials #7

            Over the past few weeks we have finished Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, started The Ceremony, and worked on some AP practice with essays and multiple choice questions. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was really interesting to annotate because of how meaningless the lines were on the surface, and how profound they were when I took a closer look. It was also fun to read because of how it built on the story of Hamlet while still having its own plot line and meaning. It also critiqued Shakespeare’s work and other writers as well which I thought was interesting, again, because it was never directly on the surface. Doing the annotating for this will really help me to understand passages on the AP exam this May as well as in college classes on literature that I may take in the future. Although I honestly haven’t gotten very far in The Ceremony yet, what I have read is really interesting because of the differences from the Western literature that I have been accustomed to. It has really taught me the importance of knowing the background of the writer because it really does help when trying to understand the meaning of the work—and especially when attempting to annotate it. It’s also interesting because there is not a lot of dialogue and everything else that we have worked on was a play which makes it a little more difficult to annotate.
            The AP practice that we have been doing is going to be really helpful when it comes to the exam. Even though the annotations that we have done have helped met to better understand passages, I still found writing that essay on Wolsey’s speech to be quite challenging. I think that I am still struggling to identify certain aspects of literature, although the exercises that we do at the beginning of the hour most days are helping me with that. The multiple choice practice that we did with this same passage was really helpful as well. Having us write our own questions using the strategies that the actual AP exam uses really helps me to identify incorrect answers and select the right one. I've also noticed that these strategies are used on a lot of other tests that I take so it’s helping me in other classes as well.