Overall Reflection

I was initially reluctant to complete the Writing Portfolio assignment because I did not think that my writing had improved throughout the year. I figured that my grades of 93 on the truth paper, 91 on the Crime and Punishment essay, and 95.5 on the independent reading thesis paper were close enough in number to prove that my writing hadn’t gotten that much butter. However, after completing this assignment, I realized that the decimal value applied to an essay cannot accurately depict improvement in writing style or advances in the ability to create a unique interpretation of a text.

I have always had a fairly decent ability to perform a close reading, and I genuinely enjoy picking apart a text. However, the mark-up of a quote does not always translate beautifully into prose, and I often struggle to vary word structure and to remain concise. The close reading in my truth paper occasionally strays from the point I’m trying to make, while my Crime and Punishment paper sees several boring, repetitive sentences with similar structures. Only in my independent reading essay do I dig beyond the surface level and use quotes to prove points that would not be obvious to the reader of the original texts. Next year, I hope to hone my close reading skills further, and then translate my critical analyses into beautiful prose consisting of concise sentences with varied structures.

English 11 Honors taught me how to develop a progression in my essays – something I had never done before. In the tenth grade, my essays consisted of one single point, and I would use three different examples from the text to support that one point. The idea of a flowing, progressing essay was daunting to me this year, and it took a while to understand it. (I can only imagine what new types of essays I will have to write next year, and how long it will take me to understand them.) My truth paper does not differ much from my sophomore year papers, because it has three different examples from different texts to prove the one simple point in my thesis statement. In my Crime and Punishment paper, I describe a progression for the very first time: I track Raskolnikov’s behavior as he falls in love with Sonia, and I relate this behavior to the intensity of his religious beliefs. My independent reading paper sees the clearest progression, because I steadily build upon the concept of atonement and the steps required to attain it. Having to write essays that show progressions has caused me to think about literary works in ways I never would have otherwise, so these assignments have been tricky but worthwhile.

I think my most significant accomplishment this year was the realization that English is about making stuff up. There are countless people who laugh at the idea of reading too deeply into a text or analyzing it beyond what the author could possibly have intended. This year, however, I learned that the author’s intent doesn’t matter; critical essays are about specific interpretations of the words that the author has provided. The concept that English is about making stuff up is really beautiful because one text has a different meaning to every single person who reads it. Each individual’s interpretation of a text is deeply personal and entirely his own. Writing is about more than just shouting words into a void: it is about creating individualized messages that touch each reader, remind readers of occurrences in their own lives, haunt readers as they sleep, and inspire conversations and ideas. Writing essays has made me want to be the person who writes the texts we read in class, because I want to make other people feel the way I feel when I understand a piece of writing. To me, the most important thing one can take away from English 11 Honors – far more important than essay-writing skills – is this deep and inexplicable understanding of the power of the written word.