We also recently started looking at the play Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller. We only watched the movie so far, which was pretty good, but we also had an in class forum about it. This was where we had multiple sheets of paper with different questions on each of them and we write responses to the question in class. It helped to do this in class first before having to write an analysis on it. It cleared up a few things and it also helped me annotate. I also liked reading some of the ideas that other people in the class had on the subject, and seeing how they compared with my ideas. That really helped me analyze the play as well. Some of the things that we were talking about were the characteristics of Post-Modernism in the play and talking about literary movements, and identifying the characteristics that we saw really help me distinguish between the literary movements.
Something pretty fun that we did in class was a project on how a character from The American Dream would feel about some of the ideas an author of one of the poems that we read (from chapter 4 in the textbook) had. We could have done a dialogue, a short skit, anything. My group did a short skit, and it was fun. It was kind of cool to connect the ideas from The American Dream to another poem that has absolutely nothing to do with it and see the similar ideas between the two. It helped me see the play and the poems in a whole new way.
I agree with you that the terms test was really confusing. I thought I understand all of the terms however it seemed to me too like there were multiple right answers for a lot of the questions. I think that small misunderstandings based on the definitions I memorized led to this issue, but the test itself was also written in a rather confusing way. I also agree with you that it helps immensely when we analyze the plays in class. It makes me think about things I never thought about before and helps me formulate opinions on the plays. The more I discuss things with others the better I come to understand it. I thought the project in class where we thought about how a character from the American Dream would view those poems was really interesting too. I really enjoyed reading those poems and I think it was fun to sort of get inside the characters' minds and think how they would view the poems.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you on the terms test. I felt that I knew the definitions of the words and I could also give examples of them, but when it came to the terms test, I couldn't seem to get the right answer. It was definitely frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI also had fun with the activity for characters in the American Dream. I thought it was a fun opportunity for everyone to get in front of the class and do a little acting.
I think your course response was good, but I think it could have a bit more of a review of the information that we covered in class instead of a general review of the things that we did.
Your responses are very clear and you put good personal responses into them, so you don't need to work on that. I agree with you about the terms test; the words could have been so many different things, and the options were all so obscure! I did worse the second time than the time before, and still didn't really understand it when I finished. I don't think any level of understanding the terms would have prepared me for that test. But anyway I think your responses are very appropriate for the rhetorical situation and you fulfill the requirements very well.
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