Reflection Letter on EBA Honors English 10

Dear ms Jenkins,

English this year had a more equal balance of writing and literature as opposed to
last year where we focused mostly on reading comprehension.In this class I was introduced
to many novels that provoked meaningful thought, changed my point of view on certain
aspects of life, and my writing skills were sharpened.

I was challenged to discuss complex and debatable topics such as women's rights,
human nature and many more. In the story Siddhartha where you follow a boy named
Siddhartha on his journey to find inner peace. This story isn't the easiest to read but
stimulates deep though as you begin to question what is really important in life. Another
book we read this year is anthem. This dystopian novel talked about a society that
pressures everyone to act the same as one another so that no one person has an unfair
advantage in life. Everything the people do is decided by others and everyone is punished
for being different. It's an interesting tale that begs the question : is it right to make others
under perform to make equal opportunities for everyone? The other dystopian novel I read
was when we had the option to choose which book we read. I chose handmaid's tale. This
book hits on women's rights as it displays a society where women have been stripped of
their rights and are only able to be wives, handmaids(child bearers), or marthas(servants).
The scenario in the book reflects the sexism displayed in everyday society. We also read
Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. This is about betrayal and corruption. The leader caesar is
killed by a self righteous man who was tricked my a power hungry man. Brutus believes he
is doing the right thing for the country of rome by killing its corrupt leader. In reality Brutus
was just a puppet being controlled by his friend cassius who is only out to take caesars spot
as the ruler of rome. The most recent book was called Things fall apart and was a different
look on how the africans felt when the europeans colonized their land. It showed a
perspective that differed from the traditional “rich natives save africa” idea. Because we are
part of the business academy one of the books we read was written by an entrepreneur.
This one was also a choice. I chose Start something that matters by Blake Mycoskie. His
book had a brief history of his business and then went onto advice giving for the rest. It was
very informative and many of the points made could be used in real life even if you have no
intention of creating or running a company. My favorite out of all of them is handmaid's
tale. The reason being that I was the most relevant to my life and that it was also a good
read in general. The entire story is shrouded in mystery and there is no definite ending. It
almost seems like the story was written just to ask how far would men go before they are
satisfied. It also opened my eyes because as a highschool student I’m not exposed to very
much sexism. However, it mirrored the way society was run not so long ago and how it
could once again return if not addressed. Women just now started being recognized as
equal and so I had never seen how life would be through the eyes of a women without
equal rights. My least favorite would be anthem. It wasn’t a bad story, it was actually quite
interesting, however it wasn’t very memorable. These stories that I read will be stuck in my
mind for years to come but anthem is the kind of story that can easily fall by the wayside.
The most difficult one to read would be Siddhartha. Julius caesar was easier to read
because I had read romeo and juliet and was used to that writing style but Siddhartha was
completely new to me. I actually had to read it twice to understad he plot because tha
author uses a lot of medaphores and strange sentance structures that seem outdated and
needlesly difficult. I believe that Siddhartha is also the most beneficial story I’ve read this
year. I’m not a very religious person but that story makes one question whether you are
living your life the way you should.

In 9th grade english we focused primarily on reading comprehension. We only had

one big writing assignment and that was a research paper. This year we focused a lot more
on writing. We learned different types of sentences that can improve the flow and quality
of one's writing. We learned plenty of vocabulary words and completed big and small
writing assignments. These assignments were quite diverse in their purpose so we got to
write many different types of workers and this improved my skill.The most challenging
piece I had to write this year was my research paper. Im not got at balancing the amount of
research and personal opinion in my paper. Last year there was little to no input about my
opinion of the situation and this year there was little to no hard facts in my paper. I have
learned about the difference between a compound sentence and a run on. I have also
learned how to embed different types of sentences to improve the quality of the writing. I
also learned many different grammar rules like pronoun agreement form khan academy
during the required SAT practice days. Before this year I had never used nonrestrictive
clauses. I believed if you were going to interrupt a sentence to add a piece of information
then it had to be important, so I would avoid adding in details I thought were inane until the
end of the sentence. Gerunds or another one I don't think I used before this year. The rest
of them I have been using I just didn’t know what they were called. The pros of the
challenges i faced this year is that it helped my learn what i was doing right and what i was
doing wrong. The cons is that some challenging things, the research paper, caused me a lot
of stress.
I made mostly minor revisions. Most of my papers are A papers but a few were
lacking. For my literary analysis of anthem I had to change the sentence structure of some
of my sentences. It was early in the year and I was trying to sound smart by using big words
and referring to the self as “one’s self” but it didn’t blend well with the sentence so I
changed it to “individual”. For my analysis on the Brutus trial we did in class I found that the
problem with the essay isn't the writing. The problem is the focus of the essay. I didn’t
explain my point well because I didn’t add more relevant examples that would have carried
my point. The only edit I made on my lord of the flies literary analysis was to explain in
more depth why the kid Rodger didn’t throw the stones at Henry. In my research paper I
changed the balance of self opinion and research. The paper was very opinionated so I
added more facts and citations to offset this. The effect of these changes is that the works
flow much better now. My research paper counts more as a research paper. This also gave
me a chance to see how I improved over the course of this year as I got more and more use
to writing again.
I love reading. I don’t really read that much to gain knowledge but i do see that
changing in the new future as my hunger for knowledge grows. Reading is the main thing i
do. If i didn’t complete an assignment on time it's probably because i was reading. I plan to
continue reading for pleasure because books give you access to the world created in the
authors head and their imagination. I also plan to keep writing in the future. Writing is an
important skill. Writing is a way to convey thoughts or ideas to other people in a way that
mere spoken words can't. They give multiple readers the ability to experience the same
thing unlike passing down a folktale through work of mouth. Eventually the original gets
lost. I love writing almost as much as reading but purely recreational. I only write fiction and
its to express my ideas to others and i don’t believe that will change in the future. I think i
prefer to keep my writing digital but only because i am not good at spelling.
This year has opened a whole new world of knowledge for me as i have improved my
writing skills, began to dig deeper in to me reading, and evaluated some core aspects of my
life. I was able to learn what i was weak in and discern what i am strong in.