English has not always been my best subject however, after taking AP Language and Composition, I feel as though I have gotten a lot better at some topics for example, literary analysis. On the practice test today, I scored a 29/47 which is a lot better than I expected since I have never studied literature in depth before. My strengths in literary analysis are what helped me do better than I thought I was going to do and my weaknesses are what prevented me from getting a perfect score.
Throughout the test, I noticed that I did really well when it came to the questions involving literary devices. I am very familiar with the majority of literary devices such as similes, metaphors, personification etc. which are all always mentioned throughout the test. I tried my best to learn all of them in AP Language and Composition but sadly, I was not successful. My goal is to learn the ones that I do not know so that I can be more prepared for the next test. Another strength that I have is that I did not run out of time. In fact, I finished the test with plenty of time left to check my answers and relax. Out of all the strengths that I have, I am happy that this is one of my strengths because I believe time management in a test is the most important thing.
Although time management is one of my strengths, it can easily become one of my weaknesses. Sometimes in tests that have a lot of reading, I get distracted pretty easily and don't understand what I'm reading. That leads to me having to re-read the entire passage or poem again and that just wastes a lot of time. I don't deal with this problem a lot however; when I do, it becomes difficult for me to finish the test. If I can fix this problem then I won't ever have to deal with it again and time will never be an issue for me.
Another weakness I have is poetry. I am not very familiar with the different types of poems and poems that are a lot older and from different time periods. I will have to study poems more in depth in order to overcome this weakness.
Overall, I have a few goals that I would like to accomplish before the AP exam in May. The first one is I want to be familiar with all of the literary devices we have learned. This is very important because every test we have ever taken/will ever take pertains all different kinds of literary devices so it is vital to know them. My second goal is to perfect my time management. I did not have a problem with the time limit today when I took the test however; it could be a potential problem in the future if I do not perfect it. My third and final goal is to become better at comprehending poetry because that is something I have never really understood or been good at so I struggled a lot when poems came up during the test.
I agree that the experience gained in AP Language and Composition was extremely helpful when taking this exam. Other than the analytical skills learned from this course, I also found the test preparation for an AP English exam in general was helpful. Phrases on this exam like “determine the meaning…” and “the function of this literary device…” were familiar because of the base knowledge learned during AP Comp. Similar to you, I was able to manage my time effectively between the passages leaving extra time to check my work at the end of the test. Poetry, I think for us and most of the other people in the class, is the most difficult to understand. The only way to overcome this weakness is to pay attention and understand the lessons taught in class. Along with the types of poems, we will also have to learn the devices used and how they contribute to the author’s message. I agree that to do well on the exam, we need to be more familiar with literary devices and their applications and a way to do this is to find them in class readings and identify how they contribute to the piece.
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