Finally

So, I am fully aware that it has been a long time since I have posted anything to my blog. But, I have been doing great things along the way. I finally have the approval needed for an initial meeting for the Teens for Life, which is November 28th. The We the People team won district and we are moving on to state in December. I have finished up most of my college applications. The Debate team has done well and I have taught my novice debaters well enough to be successful. The only thing is that I have to be at school tomorrow by 5:30. I usually get up somewhere between 6:00 and 6:20, so this is super early! I will probably get up sometime around 3. Ugh! Anyway, I also have been working on finding scholarships to apply for. I found out that I can apply for FASFA as an independent, which means I will get a lot of financial aid for college, which will be nice because the school I want to go to is $50,000 a year!!! Tonight, I am going to the fall play to support my friends that are in it, and I think it will be fun. For Speech, I am doing a piece where I am from Brooklyn, but I have no idea how to speak like a New Yorker, or anybody from the Northern East Coast. 

The end of the time that I need have to post is a bittersweet occasion. I get to move on to better and brighter things, but I will miss the use of blogger, maybe I will start a blog that I use like facebook and maybe also a tumblr. Who knows? I think that I will attempt to, but it is not the most important thing going on in my life. But then again, the end of blogging for Etymology, which means that we will so have the end of the semester, and the end of my time with an amazing teacher (I am not brown nosing! It cannot be brown nosing if it is true!!!), Mr. Hill. He can feel free to kidnap me from any class at anytime!

I would say that when I began this class, I loved reading, which I still do. I'm absolutely the hide under the covers with a flashlight after the parental units have told you to go to bed type of person. I remember that freshman year I was grounded from reading for leisure! I would go home without homework and read for like 6 hours, only stopping to eat and to take a shower. Later in my high school career, I had neglected my relationship with "reading" we never sat down and spent time together. It was the occasional reading on the debate bus and that was about it. I cheated on reading with homework. 

This semester, I have rediscovered my love for reading. We got back together. I tend to like it better when I am "seeing" its popular fiction side. It is a very diverse side of reading and therefore, I never got bored. With homework, I have had a hard time meeting the quota. I know that it is almost the only homework that I have in the class but I needed time to work on my other homework. This semester I have 2 English classes.

I will work hard to maintain my relationship with "reading," but like any other relationship, it is difficult to maintain it.

Gross!!!

I have been working with a program that teaches young children (grades kindergarten to third) how to read and how to become better readers since I was in 4th grade. However, last night was the first time in all those years that a child got sick!!!! It was disgusting and horrible. To make matters worse, she started crying after it happened.... :( poor kid....

Close Reading Bingo

Problems...

1. He presents words like "if you really want to know" and "if I have to" that explains his boring life as the average teenager. Amanda

2. In Chapter One of The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker's elegant and flowing elevation, journalistic and descriptive denotation, and slightly sweet musical tone convey the vivid detailing of the narrator's office. Although there is not an emotional tone to the passage, it still presents a brilliant and exact description of the building and its surroundings. His scholarly word choice is depicted through "radians of black luster that ride the undulating outer edge" and the lobby's "towering volumes of marble and glass." His denotation is evident through the descriptions of "the struts and piers" and the "black Penguin paperback and small white CVS bag" which are clearly easy to picture. The mood isn't very uplifting, but the connected words of "sunlight," "glossy," and "shine" help to emphasize the melodious sound that Baker employs.  XC Hoosier 3366

The problem I have with the above quote is that although the writer uses strong verbs, they also use a halping verb before hand.

3.In Nicholson Baker's work The Mezzanine, he uses elegant and intricate diction to create a formal tone. Skittles Train

4.The breezy feeling of ease when he notices the "Long glossy highlights" in the the cracks that hang among escalators. The Chief

This one is more grammatical but it it is a run on.

However the best one that I read is from my dear friend Cara, who I have not talked to in a long time! :( Anyway, here's the link... Less Than Three

Close Reading

The Catcher in the Rye By: J.D. Salinger

Salinger's bluntly precise and gritting use of language in The Catcher in the Rye depicts life in its entirety as seen from a nonchalant teenager. The passage begins with "If you really want to hear about it," suggesting that his life is nothing more than the average teenager's life. The narrator describes his childhood as "lousy." He displays the laziness in teenagers when he says, "I don't feel like going into it." He uses vulgar words like "crap," "hell," "damn," and "goddam." This suggests that Holden Caulfield is somewhat uneducated, rouge, and ignorant of the facts of life.

You find out later in this novel that he is only two of the three that I have proposed.

Currently

This one is from Hidden in a Journal "Voice is what imbues a novel with the feeling that it communicates. And no two novels ever share the exact same voice."

I like this introduction because it immediately captured my attention and it made me want to finish reading. I know that seems cliche because English teachers have continually told us to capture your readers' attention, but it is so true! I have to be caught into a book by the end of the first chapter or I will not finish because it bores me. This is why I would not read the neither Blue Blood's series, despite Taylor telling me to, or Heart of Darkness, despite the fact that Mr. Jankowski made us write an essay on it. (I plead the 5th whenever asked what I received on that essay........)

"1984 by George Orwell uses straightforward and exact diction, colloquial formality, and dull sound to create a harsh feeling for the reader, much like how Winston feels the chill of the bright cold day and the enormous eyes of the face watching him." This person has another awesome quote that I am posting. "Homer's The Odyssey poetic connotation, elegant and scholarly formality, and melodious sound."

Lucky

Style Mapping

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, uses the coarsely sophisticated literal language which accurately conveys the dialect of the narrator. The narrator is Scout, a girl growing up in the segregated south in the town of Maycomb, Alabama. She writes in long seemingly run-on sentences, but uses words like "assuaged" and "apothecary," while also saying blunt ignorant comments like "If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek." Contrastingly, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield uses the elegant, lyrical, and archaic language of Victorian England. The first sentence begins with "Whether I shall." Even more different is the style of language that is in George Orwell's 1984. He uses what he thinks to be "futuristic" language that has many made up words and long seemingly run-on sentences that are more sophisticated than those of To Kill A Mockingbird.

Quarterly

This quarter, I have been notoriously bad at maintaining my goals for reading. I feel like I'm breaking a New Year's resolution, and in a way, I am. At the beginning of the school year, I made a promise to myself that I would work on homework before it is due. Yet, I end up doing the majority of my reading on Thursday nights and Friday morning on the bus. I want to do better at work ahead over the weekend. I need to apply this to everything I do: other course work and debate included. I think everyone should implement this to an extent. Now, I'm not saying that we should be like robots and only do work. All work, no play left Jack a dull boy.

Anyway, so my goal is to read better books and more pages, which will lead to more books.