Final Presentation for English

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Reflection on the Course

Some of the skills that I have learned when it comes to our class is when it comes to identifying different parts of a novel, story, or article. Some of the things that I have learned is the difference between summarizing and analyzing a story, summarizing is when you take something that you have read and break it down into a small summary that is lacking very few details but has the main core of the story. When it comes to analyzing it takes on a bigger picture of what you have read, getting down all the details, what the story has to deal with, and the main themes that affect the story. I also learned about motif, in truth I never knew what a motif was until I took this college course. When we was dealing with motifs I was confused what it was and what it meant, so I did some researching on it along with learning about it through our lesson resulting in me gaining new knowledge about something that I did not know existed until now. The readings of the class have definitely been very interesting and stories that I probably would never have read in reality. I was not that overly fond of “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, to me it was weird and I could not really get a good grasp upon what was happening and I did not understand the satire that Swift was trying to use. Out the three of the stories that we read, I thought the “White Noise” by Don DeLillo was the best and the most interesting, at first it was confusing leaving me scratching my head trying to understand what the author was talking about. Then after research and going back through the novel I started to understand it along with all the different types of themes that were within the novel. When it comes to my writing process I believe that I try to find the main points of the story and the themes trying to narrow them down rather than have them blowing around in the wind. Before I use to have all my ideas for my writing scattered throughout the paper that I was writing and truly never had a good flow. Some of the challenges that I faced were trying to become a better writer through the internet and very little communication, I think I tend to do better when I am able to ask a person face to face about what I can do to become better. Though I enjoyed our class and learned so much from it, I thank you very much for your teachings Professor Cline!  

Technology: The Good, The Bad, and The Problem.

When it comes to online learning I think it is all about teaching yourself. You can email your professor’s to gain addition information about what you are learning but ultimately it is about teaching yourself. Technology can make it easier but it can also make it harder, being able to have a mass amount of information at your fingertips at any time is a positive, but technology can also make matters worse by not functioning properly. I think the challenge of taking an online English class is that I am only getting feedback through my assignments on how I can improve rather than having a face to face conversation on what I can do. Through technology it can make it hard to understand what the professor is talking about or what they really want, it is hard on the line of communication at times. Technology can help in a way but I think it is more of a problem; it is easy to look up information online rather than reading a book or trying to understand a chapter. For the whole semester I have been glued to my computer working on papers, not only for my English class but for others also, my computer is the one technology that I have used throughout the semester and thus has been the most beneficial. What I liked the most about having a class online was that I was able to do things on my time, along with that I was able to have a flexible schedule since I had to work most days. I also did not have to worry about attending class if I was sick or having to worry about what times I had to be in class, through online learning I was able to set my own time frame. I am not for sure what I will be using in the future since my family is moving here within a month to a new state, and I plan on attending college in person rather than going online. I believe that I am the type of person who would rather be in person than having an online class, to me online learning is a great thing for many people but it is just not for me.  Here is a link that talks about measuring the success of online learning: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/measuring-the-success-of-online-education/  

Reflection on Revision

When it comes to my writing process, I tend to have so many ideas flying at once that it is hard for me to keep them all in a line to where the paper is understandable. One moment I will be writing about death and how it affected Jack Gladney, the next moment I am talking about the drug Dylar would any tie to the first paragraph to the next. Sometimes it is also hard for me to focus on one thing since I like to write about a lot of things in order to cover the topic I am writing about. Usually I try to write everything down that I want to talk about then I go back and revise through it in order to make what I am writing about flow and have a connection from one paragraph to the next. There are times when I even completely rewrite what I wrote in order to make it better or to go with my topic and thesis statement. I usually revise what I wrote after I am done writing it or a day or two later, so I can have a new view on what I wrote to see if everything works together. The benefits that revising have are many, sometimes when you are writing at that moment you do not see a mistake, but later you can see it and correct or even improve what you wrote. Revising can also make your paper better, basically cleaning it up or fixing the mistakes that you made within the paper. You can also ask someone to read your paper or even read it out loud yourself to see if it all goes together and makes sense. The revisions that I made to Essay #3 was to tie everything together like a string and not have certain topics flying in the wind while others were together. I read my paper several times to myself and then out loud to see if the language that I used made sense and worked. Then I asked my mother and brother to see if what I had wrote made sense and did not leave any confusion.

Here is a link that talks about revision techniques: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationadvice/9823789/Revision-techniques-The-secret-to-exam-revision-success.html

The Shadow of Death- Don DeLillo's "White Noise"

Tentative Thesis Paragraph  

 

 For this essay I am struggling a little bit and I am finding it sort of difficult to wrap my head around it! I decided to focus upon the main theme of “White Noise”, which was the fear of death. I thought it was odd how the main character of the novel, Jack Gladney, had an almost obsession with death. Jack’s fear of death is understandable since he use to live in an age before television and the mass media were constantly producing stories and topics that dealt with death. In a way it is much like today’s times, where you can’t turn on the news for a moment without it being some horrific tragedy. Below is my unedited introduction to our final essay, I am going to be making some changes in the future. J

Within the White Noise, a novel by Don DeLillo, there is many central themes ranging from supermarkets to natural and man-made disasters along with a hint of German language and electrical noise. But the key theme to this novel was the fear of death that came from the world changing from a simpler time into a more modernized world. Throughout the novel Don DeLillo paints a picture that all humans have a dominating fear of death, “I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it,” (DeLillo, 144). The main character of the novel, Jack Gladney, was one such character that had a borderline obsession with death. One of the main reasons why Jack has such a fear of death is because he is exposed to an airborne toxic chemical known as Nyodene D, which remains in the human body for thirty years but with a twist in fifteen technicians will be able to tell him his chances of survival. This fear of death is such a strong theme that it affects the main character, Jack, to a point where he twists it to a false reality just to escape his own fear. There are many themes within the “White Noise” but none of them are as strong as the symbol of death, each one of Don DeLillo’s characters has an attachment to death and that is what makes it the backbone of the novel.  

 Here is a link that I found that talks about how the fear of death is a like a phobia:  http://phobias.about.com/od/phobiaslist/a/thanatophobia.htm