Ap Lang Reflection

Before taking AP Lang, I considered English to not only be my least favorite subject, but the subject I performed the poorest at as well. English to me was a malevolent thing that followed me around everywhere, around every corner. It was a formidable foe, a task greater than learning to tie my shoes. I could not grasp the ambiguous logic that English contained. Before taking AP Lang, I did not know what a “pronoun” was, or that apostrophes meant that a word was either possessive or a contraction, concepts many elementary schoolers would find rudimentary. The only reason that I took advanced English this year was because I felt it would give me a fighting chance against the ubiquitous demon that this subject was to me. This, I would find out
Most notably was the ubiquity of words that directly addressed the audience, such as “you”. Also prevalent were weak intensifiers, weak adjectives, and contractions (without appropriate apostrophes). Overutilization of personal pronouns and inaccuracies in quoting passages also consolidated my troubles in writing. Months later, I received my sixth timed write back graded, the write based on the book of our choice that we read. I received a “four”. While this marked improvement over my past writing, the improvements were minimal at best, albeit some areas were better than others. This essay showed harmful proclivities in my writing that seemed difficult to abandon, such as the continued usage of the word “you”, and editorializing with personal pronouns. The largest problem with this essay, however, was the absence of eloquence and sophistication in my writing. A clear lack of controlled vocabulary was present, notable in the second sentence of the essay; “... nothing screams the epitome of resilience…”, and in a later sentence; “... determined as all hell to get down.” Both sentences contain weak diction, such as “screams” and “hell”, where different, more sophisticated diction would