These past couple of weeks have been filled with a few new activities and we have finally ended the discussion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
The class broke into groups to take a multiple choice test. The passages were tricky, but my group and I were able to get through all the questions and (surprisingly) we finished with a decent score. This was reassuring at first, but then I questioned if I would be able to reach the same logic and analyze as well on my own.
The new piece of literature the team is reading is Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. I am interested to read a novel that deals with important Native American stories. Mrs. Holmes created an extensive prezi to provide background story on tribal stories and values of Laguna Pueblos. When I first started reading the novel I had a hard time getting into it and after getting to about 1/3 of the way through, I turned to Sparknotes. I'm sure this is frowned upon by instructors, but it did clear up a lot of questions I had concerning the order of events.
A new activity the class did was thinking back to the plays we had read this year through different lenses. I really liked discussing Death of A Salesmen and trying to comprehend Miller's message of what kind of person does one have to be in order to be successful. I do not remember which lenses caused us to look into the meaning ( Social Darwinism?), but it fostered good discussion. What was difficult for me was understanding what all the different lenses meant and applying the not-so-obvious ones. This is something I would like to study more in class and I think setting time aside to look at every piece of literature we read through each of these lenses would be beneficial for the AP Test.
Social Darwinism and Literary Darwinism are not even roughly the same thing. Also, I'm afraid that, since the test is focused exclusively on formalist criticism, we don't have any more time to devote to the critical lenses.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Sparknotes, no, I don't really approve of them for students at the AP level. If you were doing AP math problems that required you to generate formulas based on the elements in the problems, but you were getting stuck, so you went and looked up all of the formulas and explanations of how to solve them online, you wouldn't learn the math as well--especially if the explanations of the problems were written not by professors but by unsupervised grad students looking to make a fast buck. Students relying too heavily on Sparknotes, Cliffnotes, etc., tend to come to class with "canned" responses to texts that they've read online and that are not deeply reasoned or deeply understood. I'd simply rather students learn to do for themselves the work of reading deeply and going to the text for meaning. There isn't anything that we read in AP that an AP student isn't capable of reading and processing, given a bit of effort.
Audrey,
ReplyDeleteI like how you addressed everything we’ve covered so far. Although I wish I could have read more of your thoughts on the different things we’ve done. What made the multiple choice tricky? For me, the fancy wording and questions that made you reread a line a million times tripped me up. I agree that Ceremony became very confusing very fast. I think Sparknotes is an okay resource to supplement a text rather than replace it. I read A Clockwork Orange and had to constantly look things up because the book incorporated its own language that was confusing. Sometimes when we get confused, we are too distracted to notice anything else about the text, so it was a smart move to look some of it up. However I think the best move would be to ask a fellow team member or just struggle through it. I thought the lenses were interesting as well, my class discussed American Dream and I felt that we could’ve spent hours on it.
One small note about this post is to be sure to link it to things outside AP lit, other than that, lovely job!
Hey Audrey,
ReplyDeleteI love your personality and I always wish you would write more on your Response to Course Material just because you're such a funny person. I think of these posts as a time to include my personality and make it fun for the readers to read, so be a little more free and add your feelings in here. I must agree with Ms. Holmes about the Sparknotes/Cliffnotes thing (I didn't even know Cliffnotes existed until Holmes mentioned it). I'll be honest, but I used to turn to Sparknotes ALL THE TIME but after taking AP Lit I realized that Sparknotes is seriously missing a lot of themes, symbols and quite frankly, I don't always agree with what they say. So it helped me realize that there's more to a book than what's listed in Sparknotes. I will agree that Sparknotes did help me sort out my confusions in some cases. But trust me, I was just as confused as you were, heck I'm still confused so don't worry you're not the only one. I find it funny that your class chose Death of A Salesman. I was sure that every class would choose American Dream and talk about Feminism or even Marxism since it would be easiest, but I think that's just me talking. But like you, I'm still confused on certain ones like Historicism and New Historicism. It's nice knowing that I'm not the only one struggling to wrap my head around certain ideas. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Audrey,
ReplyDeleteNice post! You cover each classroom material well. I think we all need extensive self-research on "Literary Darwinism," as, at least I find, it's quite difficult to understand.
On your use of Sparknotes, I don't think using it in addition to actually reading the book is a huge deal, though I totally see Ms. Holmes's point. The line should definitely be drawn at, you know, never opening the work.
I agree that I would have loved more time spent in class on the Critical Lenses. I enjoyed our discussion on them, and would have appreciated more time to fully understand the more difficult ones, such as Literary Darwinism.
Making connections to things outside of class is important as well.