Justine Fite

Justine Fite

10-18-2011

* I think I improved a lot throughout the quarter. The first week of school was kind of hard getting into the routine of starting school again, so the summer reading paragraph I don't think was my best writing. Through out the quarter I learned how to make better topic sentences and sentence structure, I learned how to make sentences more formal and complex, for example "Though the narrator was clever and cunning at times, he is also, and more importantly, is psychotic and deranged". This quarter we wrote four paragraphs and three of them were over short stories.

* The first paragraph was over "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury. The story is about a family of four living in a "happy life home" with the latest technology, the home has a nursery that is supposed to take away the children's everyday frustrations but ends up spoiling the kids and making the parents almost useless to the kids. The parents threaten to take away the nursery and the kids, being totally addicted, would kill their own parents to keep the nursery. I think "The Veldt" was a very interesting fiction story that let me use my imagination to imagine what the "happy life home" would be like.

* The second short story we read was "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe. This story is about a deranged narrator and the deceitful murder of an old man, because of the narrators hatred for the mans 'vulture-like eye'. The narrator in the story has no reason for killing the innocent old man except he has hatred for the old man's eye. The way the narrator kills the man and hides the body is deranged and psychotic.

* The third short story we read the quarter was "Why, you reckon?" by Langston Hughes, this was my favorite out of the three because I thought the plot was the most interesting and it wasn't as obviously fictional as the other two. "Why, you reckon?" is placed during the 1930s, the start of the great depression, and is about two black men and a rich white man Edward. The narrator is persuaded by the thief to mug Edward, and in the end the two black men find that money isn't the only thing that can buy happiness, happiness comes from inside and having real-life experiences, not fake ones that you pay for.

* I really liked having the debate for three weeks. My part in the debate was the cross examination and I really liked thinking of what questions I could do to make my team win. I think the debate was one of my strengths this quarter, my team and I really got along well and we won the debate.

* I think class discussions are one of my weaknesses in class. I've learned that I learn more in class by listening and taking notes than by leading the discussion, so I am usually quiet and taking notes