Well, let's see what I've learned...

It's hard to believe that the semester is nearly at the halfway point. If it were not for our learning outcomes and my personal learning plan, I doubt I would have been able to learn so much thus far. I have had good experiences with Goodreads because I have been able to analyze where I stand as far as literary familiarity is concerned, and I have also been able to organize my desire to read more books. I plan on checking more novels off of my list by the end of the semester and I will definitely continue to use Goodreads after the end of the semester. As far as the five learning outcomes are concerned, I have made improvements in some aspects while I am still striving to progress in others. My personal learning plan has evolved over the last three weeks, but I feel like that is a good thing.

As far as knowing basic literary terms, I have been able to view the "Terms to Know" list over the past few weeks and check them off as I grasp their meanings fully. I try to employ the literary terms that I notice in all the works that we read. I specifically tried to do this in my Personal Literary Narrative where I analyzed Lord Byron's "She Walks In Beauty."



 I stated in my updated personal learning plan and in my first post that I wished to know more about literary terms and employ them in my posts and I feel like I have successfully been able to do that. The same can also be said for knowing basic literary genres. I have focused on Modernist literature in my posts because I feel that it is most interesting and meaningful for me to read. I have analyzed different novels and poems that have come out of my personal reading outside of class that pertain to that genre and have posted on those. I also try to write about things that we have learned in readings for class as I feel that the material broadens my understanding of literary terms, genres and analyses. I particularly enjoyed the poetry by Ezra Pound, the short story by Edgar Allan Poe and the Vietnam War piece "The Things They Carried."

I think that literary analysis is a skill that requires practice and discipline. Literary analysis has never been my specialty as I alluded to in my first post, however, I have tried to analyze and argue certain points in posts in order to practice this literary skill. I first tried to do a mini-literary analysis of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" because I remembered liking it from my British Literature class in the Winter. I also tried to dive deeper into making literary arguments in my personal literary narrative when I analyzed "She Walks In Beauty" by Lord Byron. I can see how my analyzing skills have matured and how my arguments are grounded in literary analysis.

Engaging in literature has proven to be my weakness. I have tried to make my posts engaging and creative but it has proven to be more difficult than I anticipated. However, I have seen how others' posts have influenced me in a positive way. A number of posts that I read have influenced me to write about my own feelings. Clarrisa's post about Rubén Darío got me so excited that I decided to write about my own experience with Darío. Another great aspect of doing the blogging is receiving positive feedback and sanctions from my classmates. The comments that I received from Olivia, Charly, Taylor and Dawn on my personal literary narrative really influenced me to continue branching out with my literary analysis and continue exploring different literary arguments. Another experience of meaningful significance was the correspondence between Briggs and myself. I saw that he had written about Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" and I decided to elaborate on his ideas. We then exchanged a few comments that helped further my own thinking and understanding of Imagism and its poetry.

I really have enjoyed being able to use the new emerging communication tools in my posts. The Poetry Adaptation Analysis was a fun way to use the new tools and share my past experiences with literature. Not only have I become more familiar with the blogging tools, but my posts have become increasingly more appealing and I can share my ideas better through links and photos. The new tools have given me an entirely new realm of opportunities to share my ideas and engage in literature creatively and socially.

In summation, I feel like I have done a good job sticking to my personal learning plan as I have learned from class readings and also personal readings. As the semester progresses and as I tweak my personal learning plan, I hope to be familiar with all literary terms and genres and be able to effectively and creatively analyze literature by using communication tools socially and creatively.