H English 10 Blog #2

This is my second blog for English class. I am finding these blogs very docile so far. This week, in English we started reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding out loud in class, which is a very bizarre and uncommon for me. To me, the book is not an insipid book but rather very interesting. It starts off introducing Ralph, a handsome, well-built boy who is stranded on an island with a group of boys, including Piggy, a gregarious boy, and Jack, a tall and ugly boy. All of these characters seem to play a major role in the book, and have unique characteristics. We also got the essay prompt, which I have never gotten before finishing the book, so I was kind of shocked to receive it. The prompt read "Analyze one of Golding's characters in his novel Lord of the Flies. Specifically, describe Golding's process of characterization, how does Golding characterize an individual during the novel?". We are taking notes that will help us answer the prompt and I have a feeling that at the end of this book, I will have all the notes I need to write an essay on characterization. Unlike my first essay on To Kill a Mockingbird, which I wasn't able to complete in the time I was given. Furthermore, I looked up any real life events that connect to Lord of the Flies, and I found an article about 16 people who were stranded on an island in 2003 in Tibet, here is the article: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200309/22/eng20030922_124673.shtml.

They faced a severe shortage of water, and some of them had caught the cold and had high fevers. There were worries that the rescuers wouldn't have been able to reach the group in time, because the island was in a mountainous area. I find this story to resemble Lord of the Flies because they are stranded on an island just like the Ralph and the boys and they are short on water. I read many stories about people being stranded on islands in danger of dying and I realized that the events that take place in Lord of the Flies, occur in real life too, and there are actual people who die due to being stranded somewhere without the tools that they need to survive. I believe that as humans, we need to be aware of this and not just think that it's all fiction and only happens in books or movies. Everyday, someone gets lost or stranded without food or water, and they can't contact anyone for help, and us as humans need to work harder on finding these people instead of leaving them to die. To conclude, I look forward to reading Lord of the Flies next week, and to learn more about characterization and the characters. That is my blog for this week, and I hope to keep improving on it as the school year progresses. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoy the next one even more.

H English 10 Blog #1

I've been in Honors English 10 for eight days now, and I can tell you that I have learned many things in those days. At the beginning of the school year, more specifically, on the first three days we learned more about our classmates and we learned about the class. We also learned how to use Google Docs and had a small assignment on how high school is in the modern world. I can't say that the first three days of school were extraneous, but they weren't as important as the first full week. On the first full week, we started to learn new vocabulary words, which were divulge, abet, dogmatic, insipid, and extraneous. I believe these words will come in hand when I am writing my essays. That brings me to the major idea of the week, my essay on To Kill a Mockingbird.

This past week was centered on picking a theme for our essay and how to create a perfect introduction paragraph to fit that theme. We had to pick between three themes: racism, childhood innocence, or rural poverty. The theme I chose was racism because it is still a major issue in today's world and I know more about it then I do about the other themes. We started off by learning how to create a hook sentence that will grab the readers attention, then we transitioned to the story background, and learned how to introduce the book and give examples from the book that relate to our theme. Finally, we learned how to create a thesis statement that flowed with the rest of the paragraph and stated what we were going to talk about. All of this is going to help me a lot when they day to write my essay comes and it is going to make it much easier for me. As I start to learn more on how to construct the perfect essay, it's starting to become easier for me to write not just essays, but many other types of writing, like blogging. That brings me to what we learned next, how to create and write a blog. At first I thought it was weird that we would be blogging for English class, but after starting to write this first blog, I realized why we are doing it. I am starting to see that the skills it takes to write a blog are similar to the skills it takes to write an essay. We aren't just blogging for our grade, we are blogging because it will help us become better writers and help us write much better essays. Blogging is just a more creative way to write and everybody needs some creativity in their life. I love being creative and that is why I am looking forward to this school year in English. I am also looking forward to learning new writing skills and vocabulary. That is the conclusion to my first but definitely not last blog, and I hope to become a better blogger as the school year progresses. That's all folks!