TOW #27: Reflection

After competing the APELC Exam on 5/9/14 I truly felt the growth that I had been waiting to feel all year long. After completing the exam I felt that I had been prepared enough for the test, and with all of my highs and lows I blew it out of the water on 5/9/14, the day that mattered most. I also experience this sense of growth when looking at my TOWs that range from September until now, and to really, REALLY, see the growth I even look at my summer work for this class.

When I first used to complete these TOW assignments, my responses were extremely formulaic and were lacking in analysis. They were purely descriptive, and they would simply explain the author, audience, and purpose, while only saying how the author achieved the purpose in a miniscule section of the overall TOW. With that said, my progression of analysis greatened immensely throughout the year, as well as my creativity. I went from listing everything about SOAPst to mentioning these concepts throughout my TOW and analyzing them to see the impact or importance they have on the overall text’s purpose. Additionally, I began to select tougher texts, which was a good challenge since the AP Exam obviously does not have the easiest or most interesting texts that you need to analyze on the multiple choice section and analysis writing section. While it is important to consider everything about SOAPst, I definitely think the progression of my TOWs mastered the compromise needed to maintain both a good chunk of analysis (much more than I had earlier in the year), however explain the reasoning behind why the author’s rhetoric was successful in achieving the text’s purpose.

With these TOWs I believe that I have gained much needed assistance in analyzing a texts purpose and then being able to write about it. I know with a lot of my analysis essays in class I used to always search for only devices, and also not even truly understand the author’s purpose, the most crucial aspect to analytical reading, before I began to write my essays.  Yet I have not mastered it completely, I feel that I have made great gains in regards to the ability to read a text and clearly identify its purpose; therefore, it is much easier to see how the author got to their purpose with the devices they implemented within their text.

Throughout the year I constantly struggled with reading when it comes to timed increments, therefore even with these TOW assignments I still have room to grow as a reader. Although these allow to me to better my skills when it comes to reading to find the purpose, I still need to get better so when it comes to timed reading, at faster paces I will still be able to finish quicker yet completely comprehend the text and be able to write an essay on it, or complete multiple choice questions on that text.

Even though at first I thought of TOWs as a weekly assignment that was just sort of irrelevant to the correlation of success on the exam, I began to see how important TOWs are to the ability to better one’s analytical skills. Similar to an athlete and their repetition to create muscle memory, a student who consistently did their TOWs would naturally become a better reader whenever it came to reading a text, finding the purpose, and then finding the devices the author used to get where they did. This increase in analytical skill also helped out with visual texts as well, and these assignments collectively helped increase a skill that is so vital to an audience since they will be able to see the big things and also the little ones that an author intentionally includes in their text to send whatever message is needed to the readers.