Last Blog

Mrs. Clinch I just finished taking the AP Lit exam and I thought that I was well prepared for the exam. All the timed writings we did in class really helped. So, I think that you should give next year's classes as many timed writings. In addition, I think that the multiple choice practices helped prepare me for the exam. Maybe to help next year's classes the multiple choice practices can start first semester as well, so they will be very well prepared for the multiple choice practice. The part of the exam I felt least confident was the multiple choice section, but that was mostly due to a certain passage about best friends and novels being terrible. I think that the numerous books we read in class really helped to give me plenty of options for my last essay during the AP exam, so I believe that next year's classes should read at least the same number of books. One thing I would suggest is getting rid of the poetry project and instead giving a smaller poetry analysis assignment, because it is very time consuming and exhausting. The students will still get to analyze poetry, so they will still get practice, and they will have more time to do other activities  I enjoyed when the class read together, since that means we can talk about the book more and that I would not have to read the book at home. So, I suggest that next year's class read more frequently in class, since it can help make them better remember the book and can give them more time to do other assignments at home. In addition, I suggest that the students watch more movie clips of the books we read in class, because it can help them memorize specific lines in the books, which will be useful on the AP exam. Although we had gotten a lot of practice, perhaps lessening the work load and allowing them to watch one movie before the exam would be nice during second semester. 

Second Last Blog

I am going to talk about Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. Throughout Wilde's play, the trivial was deemed as more important than the serious matters. A trivial matter such as someone's name effected who they would get engaged to. Jack and Algernon almost lost the love of Gwendolyn and Cecily, due to the their lies about their names. Yet, when Jack discovered that his name was truly Earnest, he got overjoyed and got engaged to Gwendolyn. Both Gwendolyn and Cecily placed emphasis on the importance of being named Earnest, since they both wanted to be married to a man named Earnest. A person's name, which is such a trivial matter almost changed two engagements, whereas a serious matter of lying about one's identity had no effect at all. Lying about one's identity should have been enough to break the engagements of Algernon and Jack. yet, Cecily and Gwendolyn easily forgave them after they gave halve-hearted reasons, since they gave stylish responses. So, style, although trivial, was very important in the play, which helps further prove the importance of trivial matter over serious ones.  Algernon Moncrief, one of the main characters throughout the play, believes that liquor tastes worse while married. Furthermore he believes that women act indecent towards their husbands and flirt inappropriately with them. In addition, Algernon believes that men need to create a false persona to get away from their wives or else the wives will do the same. Algernon believed that a marriage proposal was like a business engagement, so marriage as a whole is viewed quite negatively. Marriage seems to bring the perception of dullness, since the wives make the champagne taste worse, and the proposal is business. Yet, Algernon gave up those beliefs easily after seeing Cecily's unorthodox behavior, which shows that something serious such as someone's beliefs are not really important at all. So, serious matters are further portrayed as insignificant and trivial. In addition, Lady Bracknell  originally forbade Gwendolyn from marrying Jack, because of his origins, even though he is a rich and kind gentleman. Yet, when Jack's true origins are revealed, Lady Bracknell easily approves of his engagement to her daughter. So, the trivial was further portrayed as very important. I believe that Oscar Wilde made the trivial seem so important, because he wanted to show that everyone takes things too seriously, so he made a comical play to make fun of that.