As the year progresses, my ability to apply and annotate literature only becomes better. In this past week, I have learned how to find DIDLS in my readings and how to analyze it. This is a mandatory skill needed for the AP test, and I am sure that the amount of work I am doing in preparation for the test will only benefit me.
I will admit that analyzing Albee's The American Dream seemed like a tough task to me, since I had very little experience with annotating literature, but through practice in class and in small groups, I have figured out how to break each dialogue down and find DIDLS. This play had a lot of hidden meanings that were symbolic of ideas, but if it were not for our group discussions on how diction, imagery, language, detail and syntax relate to these ideas, I would never have made the correlation later on in my own readings. The diversity of annotations that were brought up in conversations also helped me understand on how I am supposed to annotate my own readings. Although we are now supposed to annotate individually, I feel as if I am ready to assess my own annotations in the same aspect that we did in class.
I am glad that I now have learned how to accurately annotate literature using DIDLS, this should help me next week when we start annotating Death of a Salesman. I am sure that I have learned another mandatory skill for the AP exam, and it will only get better as the year progresses.
I too was nervous about annotating text. It was much easier to annotate the text after we did some together in class.It is not necessary for you to answer this question in your blog but I am just curious - did you enjoy The American Dream?
ReplyDeleteI agree, annotations and class discussions are very helpful when trying to understand what is actually going on in the text. I also liked seeing what other people thought and comparing my annotations with those of my classmates. I am glad that you benefited from reading and analyzing The American Dream; hopefully Death of A Salesman will go even better for you.
ReplyDeleteReally? I'm surprised that you were nervous with annotating the book. I found it exuberating to write inside the book. And what i find interesting is the amount of stuff you can annotate on once you're able to write INTO the book and really read it line by line. Glad that the inclass stuff helped you out there.
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