Test Reflection

I cannot say that I was terribly thrilled when I walked in to AP Lit on Monday and heard that we were taking a practice AP test.  It was the first thing I have taken remotely similar to an AP test, since I haven’t taken any AP classes until this year. It wasn’t surprising to me that my score wasn’t great, though I am eager to learn the information and tricks to do much better on future practice tests and the actual test in the spring. Throughout my English classes during my high school career, I have found that my strengths in literature are being able to understand and pick out stuff such as metaphors and paradox. I am very good at identifying tone and mood of pieces and usually strong in detecting whether a piece of writing is an essay, ballad, sonnet, etc.

When I think about my weaknesses in literature, the first thing that comes to mind is being able to identify the message of the writing and sometimes the overall point to the story being told. My brain has an extremely difficult time processing all of the different literary devices going on at once in most pieces of writing, especially poems.  My mind typically wanders while I read them and, once I get to the end, I have absolutely no idea what I just read. I also have a hard time memorizing all of the literary devices and most times don’t know where them come into play.

When it comes to goals, the first thing I want to do is make sure I do what it takes to gain the test taking strengths I need for the AP test. The major problem I have with test taking is using my time efficiently.  In the next month or two, I want to be able to finish a section within roughly 40 minutes. When time is a priority, my mind typically wanders so that I’m only able to focus on how much time I have left and I get distracted from what I should be focusing on: the content within the test.