AP Lit Week 7: Speaking and Listening

For the first week of the second half of the trimester, we were able to present our literary function project. I was REALLY nervous. I was terrified of jumping over words, or saying something that didn't make sense. Since we weren't supposed to read word for word what was on our slides, we would have to paraphrase, which can be very nervewracking. In the beginning of the presentation, I did jumble up some words, but as the presentation continued I became more comfortable, and my sentences flowed better. Also, I really enjoyed how people asked questions at the end of the presentation. It showed that the audience was paying attention, and it was actually way less awkward then just saying "Any questions?" *silence* "Okay." The questions also made me have to think about what we have learned. It is one thing to present information that we wrote on a slide, but it is another to answer questions on the spot about the topic. I felt really confident when I was answering the questions, and I feel like I actually answered some of them better than I presented in the slide! Regardless, I really enjoyed the class asking intelligent questions. Although I really dislike presenting, I feel that the more I do it, the more comfortable I will be. Being able to present information is a very important ability to have, and it will be good to develop it to a higher level throughout the year.

I also learned a lot about other literary functions through this assignment. For example, fantasy is much more than just dragons and wizards. Fantasy can be a dream, or a thought, or just something unrealistic. Also, humor isn't always "laugh out loud" funny. Oftentimes humor in literature can be dark and ironic. I am really glad that my group picked the functions that we did, because they are honestly some that I struggle with. One may believe that theme is easy to pick up, but there is a lot of details that go into discovering a theme. I had no idea that themes really focused on trying to reveal something about human nature. I also learned that when a theme is stated, an entire story doesn't neccessarily have to follow that theme the entire time. It can very throughout the story, and there can even be many themes in a work. In all, I believe that this was a very fufilling assignment, and I feel that I have learned a lot about literary functions this week.

Here are five ways to listen better, these can all be used when listening to presentations!

https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better?language=en