Overall Reflection

This year our AP12 English class read books that had culture infused into them. We read books about the African American culture, along with books dealing with the muslim culture. All of these books were very interesting to read about. They were mostly sad books with conflicts, but that is what left the biggest impression on me.

My favorite book was A thousand Splendid Suns. The writing and story left a strong impact on me, which caused it to stand out the most. The book fist started off with a girl who is forced to marry young because her mother had killed herself, and her father didn't want to keep her because she wasn't seen as good as his other children because her mom was one of the maids. She was forced to marry Rasheed, who was older than her and looking for her to have a new son for him because his had died. She was not able to full fill his one wish, which caused their marriage to go downhill. Their relationship was filled with anger, sorrow, and abuse. Another girl, Laila came into the picture when her parents had been killed by a rocket. Laila was being treated at Rasheeds house, and a few days later she was forced to marry him because she had nowhere else to go. She winds up giving birth to a girl and boy, and as life gets worse Laila decides she is going to run away with Marrium to live a better life. She was able to successfully do this with Tariq, but Marrium was forced to stay behind because she had killed Rasheed and wanted the kids and Laila to live a happy life.

With all of these books we read, we also were writing essays every week. This caused us to train ourselves to think fast and write fast in preperation for the AP exam. Because Am class is only around 40 minutes, we had to be able to learn how to time management with planning time and actual writing time in this short amount. Practicing this every week has made it very easy to pump out well written essays in a short time frame. Also our teacher graded and made corrections to the essays, so that we would be able to improve our way of writing to get the highest score we can on the AP exam.

In class we had many group discussions and projets, which i enjoyed a lot. By working in groups we were able to help out each other and cover a wider range of information. Also it is more appealing to listen to classmates talk, instead of having a teacher just stand in the front of the class and lecture the entire class. With group discussions, I was exposed to more views and ideas that I had not thought of. I thought that was helpful when the essay time came around because I went into prompts more opened minded, so I was able to view the prompts in different lights in order to analyze it better.

Overall I enjoyed this year in Am class. I because a better writer, which is shown in my essays in my blog. I was able to better support and come up with a better thesis. Also, I enjoyed the books we read this year because of their use of symbolism and motifs, along with a lot of culture. The stories were sad, but exposed the class to many hardships and lives people live. It has taught me to make use of the fact that I am a girl who is able to go to school and go far in life, get rid of all that sh** thats holding you back, and "power to the people".