Here will be papers that Precious will post over the 1st semester of the school year.
We all know what the American Dream is. The idea of of a long prosperous life of wealth, love, and family that can be attainable by determination and hard work. But is it really attainable? Over the course of US history, people have strive to make sense of the American Dream through their current situation. The problems that have oppressed them during that time have made them questioned is that all there is to their life. Vanity Fair posted an article called "Rethinking The American Dream" and it explained how the American Dream has evolved through American history, giving the American people a sense of hope but fail has failed them each time, when they thought it was going to work out.
This article can be related to Thomas Jefferson's " Declaration of Independence", where Jefferson envisioned his American Dream as America being freed from the tyrannical grasp of the British. Though eventually America did find their independence as Jefferson had hoped, there were many loopholes to this dream. Jefferson wrote in the "Declaration" that "all men are created equal" by if you check out in history, he was a slave owner and after the America obtained its independence, African-Americans were still in slavery, so it can be implied that Jefferson sought out the American Dream for white people and not for the minority. The American Dream is not as perfect as the politicians claims to be because even if it supplies you with everything you can ever imagine, as the old saying goes"all good things must come to an end".
Austin Bay is a syndicated columnist who mainly writes his opinionated editorials on military, war, and foreign country affairs. Throughout his articles, he uses two main rhetorical devices in order to strengthen and prove his claim, so that the American people can side with him. The two rhetorical devices that Austin Bay repeatedly uses in his articles are ethos and logos. Ethos proves the credibility of a character through persuasion. Bay is a retired reserve soldier, so his extended knowledge about military conflicts proves that he is reliable and can be trusted to give out sufficient information and military or foreign affair due to his own prior experience of as soldier. Logos is persuading the audience through reason or logic. Bay uses logos countless of times in his articles in order to persuade his audience the authenticity of the source of his information. He would frequently state quotes from different people or organizations and gives an analysis about the quotesand then layer it with more quotes and analysis in order to prove his claim.
The Great Gatsby is a constant reminder to the American people that no matter wealth obtain, you will never be satisfied and always longing for more wealth. Gatsby tries run away from his underprivileged childhood in order to create a new persona of himself in order to rise to the occasion and achieve what he wanted the most but it has repeatedly backfired. When Tom Buchanan comments about Gatsby's flamboyant choice of clothes, he describes it as his circus wagon, meaning Gatsby was trying to hide who he really was through extravagant clothing, lavish house, and drunken parties. Gatsby cannot forget where he came because it will always with him, and by trying to abandon it, and act like something stick he is not, he is only hurting himself which eventually lead to his demise. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, King states that though the Emancipation Proclamation came to effect which freed lots of American-American slaves, one later African-Americans are still living in bondage, which can be implied that American Society in the 1960's are running away from that African-Americans no longer belong to the "manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination" and believed that African-Americans can still be enslaved, even though they are "free". These two texts strive to reach true satisfaction with out referring to their beginnings and it does not suit well with achieving the American Dream.
This is my Jefferson vs Stanton formal essay and I know that the first is not always perfect, I'm striving to improve when the next formal paper comes. On the next formal paper for Quarter 2, I would have already knew how to give effective evidence and back it up with a strong analysis. I would have knew how to write a strong thesis that I can back up with good topic sentence opening in each of the body paragraphs.
During Quarter 1, we did three timed essays that focused on the 3 main essays for the AP exam. My favorite essay would have to be the synthesis essay because it was easy pulling out evidence from more than one source and tying them all together into strengthening my claim. I believe I understood the prompt very well and it was easy to answer.
What I learned in Quarter 1 AP Lang is the main essays that I will have to in the AP Exam and the structures to keep in mind when writing the essays. The meaningful assignment that we did was nothing in particular because it is a college-level class, so lots of assignments were rushing at me and I didn't find anything of that meaningful. What I gained most from was essay breakdown PowerPoint, which very helpful to me because I now what there is suppose to be in each part of the essay. I wish we could have skipped the lesson about close reading because I already knew how to do it and the whole lesson was completely pointless and boring. What I am looking forward to in Quarter 2 is the book that we are reading which is "Their Eyes Were Watching God" because I watched movie and it was amazing, so I'm hoping that the book will just as good. My Quarter 2 learning goals are listening attentively and writing down good notes on what that being taught so that I can go home and review them.
Hurston uses several rhetorical/literary devices over the course of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston used multiple representatives of symbolism in her novel. When Joe Starks forced Janie to wear head wraps to cover her hair--- a trait she is known for--- he was expressing control over because he wanted Janie all to himself. The head wraps represent men subjugate the actions of women in all aspects in life. Janie's hair represents power and individuality. Her hair means that she is the master of her domain and she is not bound to the rules and standards of the world.
Her community and peers constantly nag Janie of how a woman her age shouldn't wear her hair down but Janie simply ignores them. Though she is a woman, she has pride in her hair and she will not hide it because others say so, resulting in her having a rebellious spirit. Janie's rebellious nature furthers Hurston's claim about gender and individuality. The hurricane represents how destructive nature can be and how hard it can be to survive in a chaotic world. The hurricane acts as a reminder that the world is a cruel and dark place and it is up to you to figure out how to survive it.
Mona Charen is a political analyst who does opinionated editorials on a wide range of topics, but mostly focuses on politics, especially the 2016 presidential election. Charen frequently uses ethos and logos in her editorials in order to prove her claim. She uses logos and ethos because it is either she is trying to challenge a person's or topic's credibility or support her argument using facts or quotes form trained professionals about the topic. She uses statistics quite a lot to further her argument and she appears to be open-minded to lots of sources, whether with or against her claim.
Charen uses ethos to either challenge or support a person's credibility. By using ethos, she convinces the audience that her opinion is reliable and she is a person that you can count on her word. She also convinces the audience that the person she is critiquing is credible enough to support her claim or tries anything she can to try to discredit the person that is impeding her from progressing her argument. When trying to further her argument, she also uses ethos as the backbone to give a reason why it is important to stand by her and her claim.
Logos also gives Charen's argument structure to support what she is arguing. Charen uses multiples forms of logos to support her argument. She often uses quotes words of people (typically those who are experts in the topics she is discussing) that can support or even destroy her claim only because she wants to let her audience realize that the topic she is arguing about is legit. She also uses statistics to give an accurate number of how much people have supported or tried to destroy the topic she is arguing.
What I learned in Quarter 2 was what was a synthesis paper and the components and effective strategies on how to write a correct synthesis paper. The most meaningful unit that we did was when we went over the powerpoint on how to write your Works Cited page, MLA format correctly because I seriously did not know how I was going to do my bibliography and was struggling how to do it myself so the powerpoint was VERY helpful. I also liked the SIRS database for the journal article because I didn't know know what a journal article was nor how to get one so once again the lesson on how to access to SIRS was VERY helpful. What I gained form the most was how to organize multiple sources into a well developed synthesis paper. This helped me out a lot because when I was doing the outline, I was struggling on to fit all my sources in order for my argument to make sense, when Ms. Ahearn told us to divide our paper into argument, counterargument, and rebuttal section, the whole thong came east to me and was able to type me paper with ease.
What I wished we skipped was when we were divided into two groups-- one was for culture and one was for biology and gender-- and we had to answer the five questions and put it up on poster paper. I thought it was pretty useless because I already knew what my argument was going to be about identifying your identity, so it was kind of boring, but I can tell it was helpful to most students in the classroom. What I am looking forward to is the new book for Quarter 3 about ethics. What I am dreading is the 3 essays that we will have to do for the quarter. My Quarter 3 learning goal is to learn more about ethics because I only know the surface level on ethics but I want to get in depth knowledge on how ethics works and why people should use it.
