Hey! My name is Jia and I'm a Bio Sci major here at University of California, Irvine. I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA and am currently living on campus at the Mesa Court Towers. If you would like to know more about me click here. My last English course that I took was AP Literature my senior year of high school. I read many different books and learned the important skill of evaluating a novel and the author's intentions when composing it. I was also taught how to effectively write detailed literature analysis essays. As a writer myself, I believe I have the potential to write more sophisticated and detailed works, but being concise with my words is a bit difficult for me. For example, after practicing with a sample AP exam prompt I failed to thoroughly explain my interpretation of the given poem. Something I did well from this same assignment is that my interpretation of the text and understanding was spot on with the author's intentions. I did pretty well on understanding grammatical rules and punctuation placement on the Language and Grammar Diagnostic assignment on Connect. Most of the questions I had a problem with were relating to identifying the main subject and verb of the sentence and figuring out if it grammatically made sense.
The course Writing 39A is an asynchronous class that requires class participation by reading short essays about the class's main topic, completing assignments on Connect, and staying updated on Canvas. It's also important to note that plagiarism is not acceptable and assignments can only be turned in late for a maximum of three times. This course's main objective is to take the time to produce efficient work while reading and writing. The goal is to thoroughly express interpretation and mental process. The grading policy ensures a passing grade if the following are kept: attending required zoom meetings, at least one meeting with the professor, being responsible with assignment due dates, allowing peer collaboration, checking work, keeping consistent overall effort, and meeting at least the bare minimum on all assignments. To earn a grade higher than a B, person writing skill comes into play and to earn a grade lower than a C, not keeping up with the bare minimum requirements.
Hi Jia, I'm struggling with reading poems too. I really cannot find out the sentence structure of many poems. Wish we can all learn reading skills from the 39 series.
Hi Jia:
It is glad to see that you have took AP Literature course in high school, I believe that AP Lit course is helpful for college-level writing. I have enrolled in AP Lit class in my high school, but I dropped it after the first week because I think it's too difficult and time-consuming.
I do agree with you that this course requires a lot of reading, and writing, also critical thinking for us to succeeded, and for those who wanted to earn an A will require extra steps, I think you have a great understanding to the syllabus.
Hi, Jianna. I hadn't thought about taking AP Literature when I was in high school because I think those literary works are hard to understand. You learned AP Literature in high school, so you will definitely accumulate a lot of experience in reading and understanding, which can help you do better in Writing 39A.
Hi Jia
Thank you for sharing! I think your experience of AP Literature must be helpful to your writing ability. And you must have developed strong analytical skills.
-Tianai