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Carson Neumann

Ms. Sellers

English IV Honors

January 10, 2018

Final Reflexive Essay

All throughout high school, English was always my least favorite subject. After taking

English IV Honors, it is still not my favorite but I did find this class to be more interesting than

the past. I have learned a lot this semester and have gained many new skills , experiences, and

ideas from this class.

One new thing that I learned is how to become more engaged in a book and get more out

of what you read. If I was to read Frankenstein on my own outside of class, I would not have

recognized as much as I did while annotating and discussing the novel as we read it. Another new

thing I learned was the difference between a paradox and an oxymoron. Those two have always

gotten me confused in prior classes. An oxymoron is a combination of two words that contradict

each other. It’s a dramatic figure of speech like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or ‘pretty ugly’. A paradox is a

statement that seems to contradict the truth but is an implied truth. They describe an action or

situation that seems absurd but yet can be true. I also learned how to engage in discussion and take

part in a Socratic seminar. That is something I haven’t done before. I learned many new vocabulary
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words that I can use in future essays and learned how to use Weebly and complete a project on the

website, making it easier to put everything together.

I learned some new skills that have helped me to become a better student. I learned how

to pace myself while reading a book so I would have every section complete by the required time.

I also learned how to write better sentences and use better grammar through all the practices and

quizzes on NoRedInk. It was difficult at times but I learned many new things that will help my

writing in the future. One more skill that has helped me is annotating the song lyrics in our music

journals. It makes me look closer at the words and understand the full meanings behind many of

the lyrics in songs.

At my table in class, I sat with Hope Goodman and Jackson Denny. Both students brought

their own strengths and weaknesses to the table. Hope was the best at annotating poems and stories

and she always had a lot of energy which made her the best at presenting. Jackson was the more

creative one and was good at coming up with ideas for projects and he liked to draw everything

we needed. The three of us were all good at different things which made it very easy and fun to

get all of our work done together.