Serena Horvath

O'Connor

Honors English 9

9 November 2015

Reflection Paper

There are many things I have learned throughout this semester with reading, studying, and
using dierent forms of notes. Our class has successfully completed many dierent styles of
interpreting the short stories we have read in this half of the semester, and we have much more
to learn. Here is my reflection on this semester's work.

We have read many short stories this semester from "The Rules of the Game" by Amy Tan
to "The Birds" by Daphne du Mourier. "The Rules of the Game" by Amy Tan is a short story that
is very similar to a narrative. Amy Tan describes a fictional story about a young girl who learns to
play chess, and competes against people of various ages. Her mother becomes a huge
supporter, and this story soon unravels a main theme of a mother-daughter relationship. Another
short story our class read was called "The Birds" by Daphne du Mourier. This short story is a very
long story, describing the many events that happened between Nate, his family, and his
neighbors. Daphne du Mourier provides detailed events of how the birds seemed to be going
insane, circling around the houses and attacking people all times during the day. Daphne du
Mourier leaves the reader with a clihanger after Nate and his family were locked in their home,
hiding from the birds. In this short story, there were many questions that arose like why Nate was
the one of the few people who were worried about these birds migrating and why Nate decided
to board the windows from the inside and not the outside. These two short stories are dierent
types of literature and vary in many ways, but I have learned plenty from these two stories.

To further our reading and knowledge about these short stories, we used the AP Style
Analysis notes and Literary Terms. These were given to us by Ms. O'Connor and we have used
them extensively throughout this semester. The main domains are imagery, diction, syntax,
attitude, literary elements, organization, and types of writing. The AP Style Analysis have helped
me gain further knowledge and insight about the stories we have read. Besides the AP Style
Analysis, we used AP English Strategies like TWIST and SIFT. I prefer the TWIST strategy
because it covers a wider range of topics and dierent areas of the novel like the theme and
style. SIFT covers most of the things in TWIST, except it focuses more on symbols and imagery
rather than the style of writing or how the story is written. Both these strategies have helped me
understand and think deeper into the book or short story we read. Applying these strategies and
answering questions about the domains helped me analyze and take a closer look at the story
we were reading.

As you can see so far, I have successfully learned many things throughout the course of the
first semester. I am hoping to improve my note taking and analyzing skills on the stories we read
throughout the rest of the year. This first part of the school year was a success because I learned
many things from using dierent types of methods and reading many dierent types of literature
and short stories.