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The purpose of this paper is to review the various papers that I have written this year, develop a metaphor that describes me as a learner, and cite my own work that will demonstrate my mastery of the reading and writing standards. Each paragraph will focus on a specific standard, how the attributes of my metaphor apply, and cite examples of my work throughout the year. As a learner this year, I would compare myself to a bricklayer. The positive attributes of the bricklayer are that he works steady and completes the job. He is satisfied at the end of a hard days work, and the quality of his work increases, as the bricklayer gets experience laying brick. The bricklayer's job is straightforward and he is able to freely speak his mind about how the job should be completed. There is no politics in bricklaying. Some of the negative attributes of being a bricklayer are that the work is hard and slow. The process is very repetitive and sometimes needs to be re-worked in order to get the best looking job.
I have had greater range and versatility as the year has gone by because of practicing this in my writing. I am able to draw connections between different areas of knowledge easier than I could in the beginning of the year. This is similar to the bricklayer because after he has done something over and over again, he is able to work faster than the time before that. Some examples of this from my own writing this year come from my guilt essay. In this essay I was supposed to compare information from two different areas of knowledge, a poem and a book called The Crucible. An example of where I drew connections was when I wrote the paper Guilt. For example, I wrote, "The reason that I fell these two pieces of writing went together well was because they both had to do with guilt and that was the main point in the Essay Guilt."(Guilt essay)
I liked reflective writing very much. This is because of two things; one is that I am the most experienced at this type of writing. Just like the bricklayer, I do it better and it goes quicker. Secondly, reflective writing was easy for me because I could say what I want. I like this type of writing because I can use my own thoughts and opinions to prove my point. There are no right or wrong answers, just a straightforward job where I could easily speak my opinion. We wrote many reflections this year and these were my better grades in her class, because this type of writing is my best and most favorite. This year, the books and plays that I did reflections on were The Catcher and the Rye, 'Julius Caesar', and many others.
This standard continues to definitely be the hardest for me, because in this type of writing you have to elaborate on things and gather details to support ideas. I like to get right down to the point. This standard is very hard and time consuming in a lot of ways. I first need to spend a great deal of time thinking about what I am going to write. Then I need to write the first draft and after that, I usually have to have a teacher and or my parents check my writing for mistakes. Only after numerous revisions do I usually have the paper the way I want it. This standard relates to all the negative attributes of bricklaying for me as a learner. It is hard and slow work that requires much time re-working the piece to get it right. In the piece of writing that I did for Julius Caesar, I had to elaborate on a lot of ideas and generate facts to support my ideas on the subject. I also had to give examples to support my ideas. An example of this is in my, " Who is the tragic hero? Brutus or Caesar"; when I said "An example of when Brutus is talked into something when Cassius tells Brutus how much of a better ruler he would be then Caesar. Cassius say's "There foe good Brutus be prepared to hear and since you know you cannot see yourself so well by reflection your glass, will modestly discover yourself."(Page384,line66-70,sc.1,act 2) This Quote proves that Cassius is very convincing and that he is trying to talk Brutus into joining the conspirators. (Tragic hero essay)
I feel that this standard relates to a bricklayer and my learning this year because we both have to take our time. There is also another big similarity, and that is you have to be able to support your inferences about the job/paper and in both cases, bringing prior knowledge in to support your conclusion is helpful. In this standard I do have to take my time, because if I read too fast, then I will skip an important detail and miss the whole point of the story. This is one of my hardest points because this is the most time consuming. The piece of writing that I used for this was a journal on the play "Julius Caesar". In this piece of writing, I made inferences by using the text. I said that, "Act Three was the most important act in the play or you could call it the climax in the play". I feel that this part of the play proved that there was a tragic hero in this play and his name was, Caesar. The reason I say this is that all the conspirators felt that Caesar would be bad for Rome and its entire people." (Act 3)
In this standard, I feel that my learning relates to a bricklayer, because you have to build a wall, one brick at a time. Just like I do with a paper; I go from an outline, to a rough draft, and then to a final draft, collecting small bricks of information that will build evidence to support my position. Like a bricklayer, I continue to learn, one brick at a time, until I finish my brickwork. I have done a lot this year by connecting something from one text to help support my idea. I have also had to connect my past life experiences to things that I have written this year. For example, in one of my most recent projects, which was my research paper, I had to cite things from many other sources; I wrote that Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Main, on February 27,1807 (American Poets.25).
I was really able to master this standard this year, through the writings from my vocabulary story, to reflecting on the Catcher Essay about the differences between the 1950's and today. Laying the foundation for a story, just like a brick wall, is much easier to do if you have done it before. This year we did not do too much of this, but when we did connect the stories to ourselves, I did do pretty well because I like to write about my past. In my vocabulary story, I wrote about my football season as a sophomore I wrote, "This is a Journal about my season as a sophomore. I expect this year to be the toughest year in my football career, because I will be one of the smallest players on the team and do not have the experience as the upper classmen do." (Vocab. Story)
As I step back and look at the foundation that I laid this year and the beautiful brick wall that I have begun to build in English, I am very pleased. This has been a fantastic year. I have learned a great deal and really enjoyed the last couple of weeks, doing this paper, as well as the website. I have learned so much this year and I have improved on so many things, that it is unbelievable. I still do think that there are many things that I have to work on next year, so I have set some goals. The first goal that I am going to work on, is trying to write my papers in the same tense. This will be very achievable, because I am already starting to get better at this. My next goal is to try to increase my vocabulary, by using bigger words in the papers that I write. In all, I feel that I have had a good year and I hope to carry on my success into next year.