Closed Reading - #3 "Gadhafi's death is only the beginning"

I found a surprisingly large amount of good information for analysis in this short editorial. 

First I want to comment on the title. "Gadhafi's death is only the beginning". This gives readers a sense of foreboding and fear that there will be more problems in Libya after the erstwhile dictator's death. As readers read on, the readers are shown other possible problems such as the possibility of the rebels "splintering" to create a new dictatorship. 

Second, another thing that is interesting is the syntax of the first paragraph. The author starts out with "It's hard to recall a time when so many tyrants and terrorists met such fitting ends." The author then lays out many examples of "tyrants and terrorists" who were disposed of in the past couple of months. The structure is effective and the first paragraph serves as a good intro to the rest of the editorial. Also the last paragraph is a carefully constructed piece of syntax. The author points out the effects of the Arab Spring and how the U.S. could possibly improve their relations with the Middle East. However, back to the "tyrants and terrorists" the author finishes the editorial with, "Patient persistence should keep the tally of fallen despots and failed terrorists growing, with Syrian leader Bashir Assad the next likely candidate to join the list."

Lastly, the author uses diction to show the tyrants and terrorists in a bad light. The use of words such as "demise" and "despotic" suggests that the author thinks that these people deserved what they got and the world is a whole lot better without them. 

Responses to Course Material - #3

To be completely honest this is the first time I have ever delved into a book and analyzed it. I was absolutely astounded on how much meaning each and ever sentence may contain. It is easy to get a overall picture but by analyzing every single sentence you can find more information to help you understand the story better. I immensely enjoyed our class discussion as it helped my understanding of the story better. Although at times the discussion got a little bit boring and slow, it was really helpful overall. One thing I thought personally was if authors actually intend to shape a story in every way as to make the story more easy to understand and find. I found it a little disconcerting on how much information authors may be packing into every sentence of the story or in this case a play.
I was glad that we were given the exact same Eros prompt. I was able to read up on material and prepare myself better for the essay. However on the actual AP exam we will not know the actual prompts until we take the test, I will continue to work on to develop my skills on writing essays.

Responses to Course Materials - #2

First of all, we learned a lot this week. From the last two components of DIDLS to Edward Albee’s The American Dream there’s a lot of material we covered this week. Although it’s a lot of material I think it’s not exactly impossible to understand and use all we have learned.

First we began to explore the last two components of DIDLS: language and syntax. I think I already had a pretty good understanding of the use of language to enhance the meaning of a work but syntax was almost a new concept. I was not familiar on how authors use syntax to create various effects and moods. The practice sheets really helped me understand syntax by giving me different passages to analyze that all had different pieces of syntax from each other. I think that the group discussion also helped further my understanding of the technique.

The second thing that I remember from this week was the Theater of the Absurd. I enjoyed reading on the history of comedy although I did not know the five different types of theories that adhere to the different aspects of humor and how they can be combined to create different effects. The most difficult aspect for me was to find humor in something that seemed humorless. However, after learning the five theories I am able to spot humor and analyze it complexity easily.

Reading The American Dream was fun but rather bizarre experience. While I did not particularly enjoy the plot I was pleased when I could spot important meaning in the play using what we learned from DIDLS. I liked the intricate details Ms. Holmes explained throughout the play which made the play a lot easier to read and understand.

Once again, I struggled with writing the essays even dividing it up into the thesis, and main idea sentences. Although I was able to come up with some good arguments for our group, I felt that they picked up a lot of details I didn’t think of before. While it was good practice looking at actual essay prompts for the AP exam, I think there is so much more I can learn and improve on. This week I learned that creating a good argument is very important, but supporting it is even more important. This is a skill I can never stop getting better at and I will continue to work on this skill.

Close Reading - #2 "Life lessons: Steve Jobs on Steve Jobs"

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/06/life-lessons-steve-jobs-on-steve-jobs/?iref=obnetwork

This is not a proper editorial since it is only a copy of Steve Jobs's commencement speech at Stanford University from June 12, 2005. However I found that it has a very strong voice nevertheless. Therefore I decided to write my blog post on it to honor Steve Jobs who recently passed away. This commencement speech at Stanford University sums up Steve Jobs's life lessons.

Lets start with details. Steve Jobs is famous for his innovation of different font styles. He talks about how he became so fascinated by fonts when he was attending Reed College. He says "I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great." In this sentence I could really feel his passion for learning calligraphy. I could see where he was going with this because this came under one of the three big stories of his life: connecting dots.

In the second big story of Steve Jobs's life, I could feel his feelings by his use of imagery. He starts out by saying how he was fired from Apple after 10 years when he first started it with Steve Wozniack. He doesn't merely state that it was devastating. He compares it to simple actions that we can actually relate back to. "I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me." As I listen to him (or read) I could see what he meant and how he felt. As someone who used to do track, I could understand him more easily and thus Steve Jobs's purpose of saying the comparison was achieved. The audience understood.

His use of language jumps out to me more clearly than anything else I could of have found. His third story is about death. How you can't avoid it. He starts out with the story of how he was diagnosed with cancer and how the doctor told him to "settle his affairs." His use of language comes to me and it, in a sense, actually made me emotional. I could feel the dramatic effect he wanted the Stanford students to feel. This is the paragraph that jumped out to me the most. By creating this atmosphere with his language, he is able to get his important message across to the students: live life to its fullest.

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true." -Steve Jobs

R.I.P Steve Jobs

Responses to Course Material - #1

Well, if there is only going to be one thing that I remember from these first couple of weeks it's going to be the acronym for Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, and Syntax: DIDLS! I think this is a useful tool for us to remember to find all these components from any piece of literature to understand its meaning more indepth. If there was one thing I was confused about it is the component of Details from DIDLS. I think most of the time Details are incorporated into Diction or Imagery. But using this tool generally is something that I will have to get used to.

While I did find the grading scale for AP essays quite alarming (it makes those SAT/ACT essays look quite easy), I found an important and not so good aspect of my writing. I tend to sometimes skip over important parts of essay prompts. This is most definitely not good and I will have to work on writing a good thesis in the future. On a after thought, this may explain why I got so many 8 out of 12 on my ACT essays.......

As a last note, to be completely honest, I really do not like looking at poetry. This probably lead to a quite horrific essay to read from friday but that's just something I will have to get used to in the future.