English Final Exam

Throughout the year, we’ve discussed and learnt about many pieces of information that will help us throughout our lives. We’ve covered everything from themes to ESLR’s and done a few reflective journals. From all the work we’ve done, I’ve definitely shown some personal growth. These include my confidence, group work, and computer programs. Furthermore, I’ve clarified and learnt more about the ESLR’s. I also feel that during this class I’ve been an Effective Communicator and a Self-Directed Learner.

This school year I’ve become more confident. By going through the Drama exploratory, I’ve been required to humiliate myself. I had to perform my appearances for the class and eventually an audience. My partner and I also had to write a script for a short scene and we’d rehearse it just about everyday after the initial writing of the script was done. Additionally, I felt that the poetry unit helped boost my confidence since I didn’t think that I could write poetry very well and I wasn’t comfortable sharing my ideas in such an artistic and figurative way. These have tested me and pushed me outside my “comfort zone”. I also feel that during this year, I’ve excelled in my group work. In our Anne Frank project, I had to work with people that weren’t exactly my friends. Additionally, we had arguments and disagreements about aspects of the project. What made it even worse was that one of group members refused to do any work. These are all valid problems that could come up in work life. Another project that took our collaborative skills to the next level was the International Teen Life Project. In the project, we had to work with students from three other schools around the world. Although we’d never met these students face to face, we still had to work with them. All of us were in groups of six and we had to communicate by ourselves to get the project done. We had to use email, instant messaging, blogs, wikispaces, and voice calls over the internet to send our ideas and feedback to other students. Because the other school were in a different time zone, it was hard to set up voice calls and instant messaging. This meant that we had to usually use email, our blogs, or the wikispace and these would take about a day to get a reply. Yet again this is another scenario that may come up in our adult lives. Finally, I felt that I learnt more about a computer program called GarageBand. During our Tempest podcast, we used this application to string together recordings and sounds to reenact the book in modern English and Shakespeare’s text. Before doing this project I didn’t really know how to use GarageBand, but instead simply clicked around and experimented. However, after getting a basic tutorial of the program and doing the project with it, I’m a much more coherent user.

In addition to demonstrating personal growth, I feel that I was also an Effective Communicator. I demonstrated my creative talents to convey ideas during the poetry unit and book. Instead of merely writing an essay to describe my ideas, I wrapped them up in inventive and descriptive layers. The reader now had to not only read the poems, but also decrypt and peel away the captivating part of it to get the core, which is what I’m trying to verbalize in the poem. During the International Teen Life Project, I demonstrated the skills of effective collaboration. I did this by working with others that I’d never met or seen. I also incorporated technology as a tool for communication since we had to use an array of new technology to talk to each other. These included mainly blogs, emails, and wikispaces. I also incorporated technology as a tool for communication in the Anne Frank project. This is because my group and I created a movie to communicate Anne’s hopeful message of peace to the world. We did this by inserting pictures, words, music, and sound effects together to fashion a movie that was appealing, but also simulated what Anne Frank when through and sent out her message.

Lastly, I feel that I was a Self-Directed Learner. When I designed the poetry book, I demonstrated competency in goal setting, time management, and organizational skills. I would set myself goals such as trying to get all the required poems done by a certain date. I also showed time management and organizational skills. This is because I planned out what I was going to do and didn’t go off task when working on the book. In addition, I didn’t misuse time or leave my book to the last minute and have to stay up all night before the due date working on it. During the scavenger hunt for the Tempest, I felt that I took creative risks in developing untried ideas. One section of the scavenger hunt was to look for objects that symbolized themes of the book such as mercy, revenge, and harmony. I did this and I also made some of the objects out of Lego. To finish, I feel that I monitored, adjusted, and documented work in progress when doing my reflective journals. The reason for this assumption is that I’d continually alter my journals to develop them. Moreover, I would save different drafts so that I could go back to a later version if I didn’t like the changes that I’d made.

In conclusion, I’ve done a lot in English this year. I’ve learnt valuable pieces of information such as the reflective process, poetry, and the ESLR’s. Although I haven’t talked about themes in this essay, we’ve also discussed many of them in class. The questions that we’ve asked and the themes could keep you pondering forever. However, I feel that the most important of everything I’ve done this year is my personal growth. This is what will shape me to the person I’ll be in the future and the skills I will possess.