Post #6

The final draft that we handed in, I feel like including my writing process is so hard. I had trouble of making the essay formal or personal.  I've learner over the years that I had to make my essays formal, I did interperate a paragraph where I included my writing process and I made it personal because i couldn't find any other way to include it without being personal. My essay was repeatative I would say because it was so hard for me to actually include my writing process and answer the paper topic.  I feel like i need an assistance to revise my essay and I will. I am sad that there aren't any more readings even if I didn't like majority of the time. They were fun to talk about in the class discussions, I guess we could still talk about our concerns for the final. 

Post # 5

For the past month of November, we didn't do much class work. We've been working on the final. I found the last in-class essay was a bit hard, the quesion of "What makes writing good?" is so general. I'm pretty sure i did bad on it because to me the question was so general. I picked one topic but i couldn't use just one example to back up my main idea. But i do feel like these topics make it easier for me to write my final essay, and I gotton better at the comparing and contrasing, and also using one example to back up my ideas.  

Post #4

In English class I've realized that we do a lot of Hispanic and Spanish based readings, and I don't really like them.Spanish is not my language and I find it very confusing. Can't we do different readings , I rather read about white people than more about Hispanic based stories. I get that these stories you pick for the class have a general message and social issue but I'm pretty sure other races have the same problems or at least similar problems. So today we had the in-class essay and I feel as if I could have done better because I think I answered the question but I could have done better backing up my main argument. I realized I don't write that well when its on the spot, I need time to process my thoughts and I did do a map during the pre-writing. But as I wrote the essay I realized my thoughts were repetitive so then I needed to come up with something else to write about that relates to my main idea. Are we going to do more of reading just plain novels or we going to do something different, like the graphic novels? If we are doing something different I can't wait!! But I do feel that I've learned to get my thought down faster, and in a way, when I do finish earlier I will have that time to go back and fix up the parts I'm missing in my essay or go back to re-read my work and catch some careless mistakes I make.

Post #3

In this past month we have been working on graphic novels and I really enjoyed it. I feel like long narratives tend to bore me even if the topic is interesting. The graphic novels I enjoyed the most was the "American Born Chinese" and "The Veil" readings. These both focused on social issues such as racism and sexism which I find very important.  I feel that I could relate to these two readings because I am Chinese and because I am a female. We had other readings like the Mexican theater one but I didn't like it as much and I was mostly confused with that one, there was a lot going on in that reading.  I'm sad that we don't get to do any more of the graphic novels. Well this month was pretty easy, I feel like my short essay 2 was easy to do because i could relate to them and I got the two graphic novels that I used in the essay pretty well.

Post #2

The Caroline readings were interesting. I watched the movie before reading either editions and the comic book version was the most weird. I would say because they illustrate the story for us, I was different from how I would have imagined while reading the novel version. And the illustrations are more scary than how the movie would put it. Because the movie was a Disney movie (i think or pixar) it was children friendly so the story was much happier and no scary at all. Also I feel that reading a novel version and the comic version makes you realize the different styles in each author.  Some scenes are need to have more details verses in a picture one the detail isn't needed because its already drawn on. I like that we read more fun novels, reading a whole book can be a lot, and it fun to just read a cartoon every now and then. I am glad that the next few in class readings/discussions have to do with more comic stories. And also because it is a novel verses a movie, the details are dragged out so much. A two or few hundred page book verses a hour or so movie can really make you miss some details that you don't notice in movies but you do while you read about them. It made me notice the different writing styles authors have, depending on the story or how the story is written.

Post #1

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao   was a long and confusing book. In my opinion this isn't the type of literature I would typically read for enjoyment. A Hispanic based book with a lot of the Spanish slang throughout the book, it can get confusing. Also I would get confused when they compared the characters to how "real" Dominicans were, I have no knowledge on how Dominicans are. The book was interesting at certain parts but I would not re-read this book. Personally I don't like these kind of novels, where it tells a story and is a certain heritage based book. If you're not the same race or speak the language the novel is set in, it can be boring. To me reading this book was a bit boring, but I did find the character Lola interesting  Her troubled history and her choices were interesting and I guess cause she was more of a wild character, it was fun to read about her.

After reading it and discussing it in class, the class discussions made me realize the bigger idea behind the whole book and how this novel relates to real world examples, like in every other book. But the discussions were an eye opener.

The in class essay was unexpected, I have forgotten almost everything on the book and to think back into details about the language, code switch or translation ( i think those were the two topics) was hard and I couldn't elaborate my thoughts fast enough to make the essay good. I felt as if I went in circles in trying to describe how the spanish that Junot Diaz uses relates to how he wants the readers to feel when they come across the spanish language.