Reflect on Your Semester in English II

This semester in English II was hard, but I learned a lot of things. One thing in the class that made it hard for me was that we had to read a lot. Some of the books were very good, but not all of them. The only book that I really did not like was “Frozen in Time”. The book was not interesting to me, and it was hard to read. It was also hard to remember what I had read in this book. I thought that “Persepolis” was a better book to read. It was more interesting, but I could not understand why people were doing some of the crazy things that they were doing. “Girl with a Pearl Earring” was a good book and very interesting. I did not realize how much I remembered from the book until I saw the movie. When I was watching the movie, I would remember that something different happened in the book. “Pobby and Dingan” was one of my favorite books, but it was too sad at the end. When I was younger, I would play with my stuffed animals and pretend that each animal had its own personality. Kellyanne’s friends were invisible, but reading about them made me think about when I would play with my stuffed animals. “Gathering of Pearls” was my third favorite book that we read. I liked how Sookan was so brave and worked very hard in school. Her mother was very kind, but I thought that her sister was really mean and only thought about herself. Sometimes when I was reading the book, I would be angry at Sookan’s sister because of something mean that she did to Sookan. My second favorite book that we read was “Me and You”. I felt sorry for Lorenzo and was afraid that he would get into trouble for hiding in the basement. At first, I thought that Olivia was a bad person, but as I read the book, I started to think that she just needed help. It was very sad how she died and that Lorenzo was the only person that was called. “We Were Liars” was my favorite book, no matter how much we had been assigned to read in this book, I would always think about reading more, because I wanted to know what was going to happen. I still think about whether the other Liars were ghosts or just in Cadence’s imagination. I did not like that it had a very sad ending, but it was my favorite book that we read.

            The things that I improved on the most were understanding what I read and writing. As I read more and more, I got better at understanding the story that was being told in the book. At first, I would read word after word, and never think about the story. Now I think about the story more. The other thing that I improved on was writing. When we started having assignments where we would have to write 500 words on something, it might take me 4 hours or more to write 500 words and correct my mistakes. Now, it takes me much less time. I have still not been able to write 500 words on any of the plays that we have seen, but when we saw the play “Bone Chiller”, I remembered the story and most of what happened during the play. It was easy to write about what happened during the play. I just could not think of 500 words to write about the play.

            Next year, I need to work on improving my English vocabulary and writing without making so many mistakes at first. During the summer, I want to read some books with happy endings. For part of the summer, I will go to summer school to work on being better with English.