In high school I took two different AP English courses. My
junior year I was enrolled in AP English Language and Composition and my senior
year I was enrolled in AP English Literature and Composition. My experiences in
these two classes turned out to be very different. I ended up passing the AP
test my junior year, but not my senior year, but that was not where the
differences stop. My junior year I really felt as though I had a good
understanding of what was expected of me in regards to writing essays. This
allowed me to put forth my best work and was even enjoyable (as enjoyable as
writing an essay can be). However, my senior year things were much different.
We were required to analyze poems, essays, or novels and write some sort of an
analysis essay about them. Although I had developed good writing skills, they
did not show up in this class. It was extremely hard for me to write an
analysis essay; my brain just doesn't work that way (which is why I am a math
major). I knew exactly what was expected of me, but I simply could not perform
at the necessary level. This was actually really frustrating for me. I don’t
feel like I was taught how to properly analyze a text and based off of that
analysis write an entire essay. This reflected in my essays and ultimately on
final AP score. Although this affected my AP score, I don’t think this had much
of an effect on my development as a writer. I know that I can write; I just couldn't analyze properly in order to write an adequate essay. Hopefully, I won’t
ever have to analyze a text and write an essay based off of that again!
I'm sorry to hear that your experience in the literature class was negative. The media essay that we wrote earlier this semester is form of analysis, although it's different than a literary analysis in some ways. One of the main ways in which it varies is our focus on primarily non-fiction texts.
ReplyDeleteI took AP English as a senior as well and had the same experiences! I do not have an analytical thought process so that became a huge obstacle to overcome. I definitely think it made me a stronger English student, though.
ReplyDeleteI went to a small school so we didn't have AP classes available to us, but I never really felt like I missed anything. I was still able to pass the AP test, and I never had to take a class devoted to passing an AP test.
ReplyDelete