English 10

This is going to be my last post on this blog ever. I have written many posts since I first joined Mr Mcknight’s English class and it kind of feels weird to think that this is going to be my very last post on this blog. I have learned so many things from MYP5 English. I have learned how to analyze a poem, how to write, how to speak, etc. The most memorable thing from MYP5 English is of course public speaking. The time when we had public speaking almost everyday, I absolutely hated public speaking. I was, and still am not a good speaker and I was so afraid that I would be chosen from the roulette that has our names. I can remember that I was shaking and sweating so much that time. However, even though I really hated public speaking, I am sure that it actually helped me learn how to speak in front of many people. I will not forget this memory forever. 

The thing I learned in MYP5 English that I think will stick with me is writing skills. We had to write something on the blog every wednesday and it was sometimes stressful because I had to think what to write, but it was also sometimes very enjoyable when I wrote personal writing on the blog. I think the habit that I made during MYP5 English, which is writing something every week, will stick with me even when I move to a different school. 

I learned and felt tons of things in Brookes and I will not forget this memory forever. Since I am moving to another school in Canada, I will visit Victoria often to reminisce about my life in Victoria. Thank you to all the teachers and my classmates in Brookes, and I hope to see you again. 

 

Since this is my last post, I kind of have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I’m happy that the school year will soon be over and there will be no more homework or papers to do. On the other hand, I’m sad because I know that my time here will soon be over and I’ll have to leave my friends behind without knowing when I’ll see them again. I will take home many new things from the MYP5 English course as I faced many challenges and learned many new things in this course.

What I will remember the most are the conversations and discussions we had in class about poetry and how we analyzed each poem.  We spent a lot of time on the topic of poetry, and I think that is what stuck with me the most. Everyone shared their thoughts on each poem, and by analyzing each one, we came to understand the language of the poems more and more and went deeper into analyzing the messages of the poems.  Besides, I will always remember how we analyzed Romeo and Juliet and discussed whether it was real love or not.

I definitely learned a lot in English MYP5, including how to improve my writing skills, how to give a good public speech, how to take proper notes, and learning new vocabulary. The biggest impact on my writing skills was definitely creating a weekly blog post in class. By writing a post every week, I learned how to write properly and how to form sentences. When I first got here, I was a little lost the first time because I’ve never had to do anything like this before, but over time it got better and I managed to write a blog post properly and put my thoughts into words.All the assignments in class helped me improve my writing skills, but writing a blog post helped me the most.

 

What I remember the most about MYP 5 English is that this is the first time I have studied English in Canada. I find little to no differences between studying back in Hong Kong and Canada, but the public speaking we had to do from the beginning of the year was the most “memorable” experience in an English class. I am a very introverted person and I usually hate communicating, since it is time-wasting and unnecessary. Another thing that is unforgettable in this class is having to read fiction. I prefer reality more than imagination and fantasy. I feel as though there is so much factual information that I should read which is far more important than unicorns, mermaids, and flying dolphins. I would say the amount of hatred I have towards fiction might have decreased, but if I have to choose, I would definitely read non-fiction instead.

This year, I have read quite a lot of books, such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Romeo and Juliet, and Brave New World. To be honest, I enjoyed reading them and learned a lot from reading. This is also the first year that I have been able to learn about history. It fascinates me but also bores me. Overall, these books contain the common knowledge we, students, should know about, so I wouldn’t complain much about it. However, the most important thing that helped me to learn more and that will stick with me is doing the vocabulary worksheets. It is a very valuable practice to increase my vocabulary size. I am able to use them in a conversation or in an essay.

I had an interesting and worthwhile time studying MYP 5 English in Canada. Even though it’s not much of a difference compared to what I have learned for ninety percent of my life, I have experienced English in a different country, culture, and perspective. But I wished I didn’t have to study poetry that much.

What will you remember most from MYP5 English?

I will most remember all of the class discussions we had because that’s where I feel I learned the most and was also the most interested. whether we were reading a book and making comments on it, or doing public speaking, there was always something that someone had said that had me thinking about afterwards and even now. I will also remember all of the many sheets of paper Mr. MacKnight gave us that made my bag so heavy. Poems, Books, Homework, whatever it was it always came in bulk. I admit that I learned from it but I also admit that my back hurts just that much more too.

hat have you learned in MYP5 English that you think will stick with you?

The thing that has stuck with me the most from English class is my ability to consistently read every day. Even though my work habits aren’t great, it has become a habit for me to read for 15 minutes before bed and its helped with many of the things I learn in English normally, like vocabulary and writing skills. I think this habit will stay especially since we have all of that writing to do over the summer and it will benefit me for sure. Something that I would say is a joint effort between English and Socials is my ability to write essays. Last year my ability to write essays or any research related texts was poor, it took me ages and it made no sense no matter how hard I tried, but the methods and information Mr. T and Mr. MacKnight taught us have brought my ability a long way. I’m far from perfect but I’m moving forward.

Looking back to my year in English Literature 10, all the assessments, assignments, and books I or we have read as a class, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was my favourite book. The author introduced a different world. The book’s story was a different experience than reading other novels that kept the same way both worlds work. In the Brave New World, everyone was born was a level, like Alpha or Beta, and people were encouraged to have sex with different people every day. That is entirely different from the realistic world, but in the book, the author described it as if it was right and always like that.

In my first lesson of English Literature 10 in term 1, I had to do public speaking. I am not shy when between friends, but coming up with a speech on the spot and talking about it in front of the entire class with some people I did not know well was not the easiest. Although it was a rough experience for me, it helps practiced my public speaking skills. As I do more and more of them, I get better at it, which would be a useful skill that can help me later in life.

I’m a very lazy person, forgetting to do my work and leaving them to the last minute is the most common thing for me. Every week in English Literature 10, we have either Personal Writing or IRJE or blog post or sometimes Vocab sheets, and these tasks would be posted on ManageBac, which I never go on after school. That made me always hand in my work late, and until the last minute the deadline passed, I would speed up and finish the work, not leaving time to put in my best work. This situation has been changing through the help of Mr. MacKnight, not all my teachers chased me down for late work, but Mr. MacKnight is one of them. Sometimes Mr. MacKnight would remember my late work while I did not even know there was an assignment I did not do.

Although I always complained about the amount of work, I admit I could have finished them if I worked hard and used my time well, so next year in Grade 11, I will continue my way down in English and hope to get better.

 

MYP 5 has been a memorable year for me. During the times of stress from the work load and the fun memories with my friends, this year has been truly phenomenal. Our English class is a big part of my MYP 5 year that I will never forget. I think the biggest takeaway from English that I will remember the most is public speaking. The random name generator always hit me with the feeling of nervous anticipation as I would be on the edge of my seat when waiting for the random spinner to decide who’s fate would be publicly executed. At the time, I would always be anxious about what I would have to say in front of the whole class and doubt myself for preparation. However, over the course of public speaking in English like, the class discussions about our books such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Amusing ourselves to Death, the Remembrance Day ceremony presentations, the prologue recitations of Romeo and Juliet, all benefited me in many ways. After all the practices and experiences in English I found myself to be fully confident with public speaking and can now participate in any public speaking activity with no difficulties what so ever. As of now, I am very grateful for the public speaking Mr. MacKnight made us do in English and can now apply my enhanced public speaking qualities into my oral examinations in the DP but also in my life.

One thing that I have learned in English that will always stick to me is how to analyze poetry. Firstly, to accurately analyze poetry or even different writing mediums and stating your opinion with evidence is something that needs a great amount of practice. When coming to MYP 5 I had no prior knowledge on how to construct a well developed analysis, with backed up evidence and conclusion. Thankfully, from what I have learned in English I know the specific questions to ask about poems and to deeply understand things that I need to avoid. Learning this assisted me with enjoyment from reading poems by the close attention to investigate how it is written rather then the overall meaning of it. Furthermore, something that I can also say I learned is the use of polished writing skills along with the proper structure of a essay. The useful demand of reading for 15 minutes each day and also uploading writings to the class blog definitely enriched my writing skills in a factor of ways because of repetition of practice and also to the new ideas of reading. I am incredibly grateful for all the things that I have learned in English and will apply my established skills from this year to my upcoming English academic classes. Thank you to everyone but most importantly Mr. MacKnight for preparing us and making this years English class an amazing journey.

The school year was cut shorter than usual for me because I came in the second term but nevertheless, I believe I had an experience as unique as everyone else’s. The year was filled with countless activities, some kept us busy, while others made the year tedious. But the thing I will remember the most would be reading the book and note-taking “Amusing Ourselves To Death”. This mini-unit was probably one of the most impactful this year in English class and also the most rewarding in terms of knowledge. This book helped call my attention to the reality of the world we live in, and has deepened my understanding of it too. For example, he speaks about how news is delivered to us and how it’s  significance is greatly diminished  and the words carry no gravity because of the method it is presented in. A news reporter could be stating how a country is being raided and its citizens killed, and the viewers wouldn’t bat an eye because of the uniform manner of presentation when other news is being presented.

Anyway, a thing that I have learnt this year in English and would like to stick with me is to remain with simplicity. Especially in my writing, I tend to explain good concepts with complex words and scenarios. The issue with that is, not everyone will comprehend that and my ideas begin to lose their structure, I need to communicate in a manner that best suits everyone, and not just myself, and most of the time the solution is with simplicity. State my ideas, state why I think so, and then show some maturity in the process of writing and thinking about this, simple. This is the formula I will stick with for all classes, because it is one of the problems I face in classes. I hope to further build further upon this tool because it is a very valuable lesson that I believe will assist me when I write and speak.

As a MYP student, MYP5 English was an intriguing year for me. I was able to improve in areas such as reading for 15 minutes every day and being more analytical when reading literature. This year, though, I discovered that my writing talents needed a lot of work. The appropriately poor ratings I received for various assignments were, I believe, the most essential things I will remember from this year; prior to coming into MYP5, I always believed that I was a competent writer. Prior to grade 10 (grade 9), I had a lot of good English grades, but when MYP 5 English came along, I quickly realised how different they were in terms of difficulty. In comparison to Grade 9, MYP 5 was significantly more challenging and graded more rigorously. Nonetheless, despite the low grades, I believe they were extremely beneficial to me because they provided me with a great deal of useful feedback that I will remember in order to improve my writing; the most useful feedback I received from Mr. MacKnight was to strengthen my arguments by using clear expressions. I had a horrible habit of not being able to substantiate my observations with clear phrases in many projects; thankfully, owing to Mr. MacKnight, I have gradually improved, but there are still a lot of things I need to work on if I want to succeed in the DP diploma.

It has been a year since September. English class has always been the hardest class in all the subjects probably for everyone, me as well. Personal writings, IRJEs, and different kinds of analyses are difficult. However, I learned a lot in English class this year, especially the analyzing skills and vocabularies from the vocabulary homework that we have done this year. The Remembrance Day Ceremony was the most unforgettable milestone that I have achieved this year. I advanced and improved my public speaking skills through this project. This was also the first time I speak publicly in my second language. I learned the techniques of being an MC. I learned to use the appropriate tone to speak in a certain occasion. At the beginning of the year, I was anxious and worried about getting picked by the wheel for pubic speaking. Days passed, I started to be less worried and more confident on speaking to everyone. From the different public speaking, I learned to make fast decision and organizing my speech at the moment. This is one of the main takeaway from this class.

I learned how to analyze texts that are in different genres such as poems, stories, and even old-fashioned English texts like Shakespeare’s literature. I learned about a variety of writing styles from different authors. I also advanced my writing skills by writing different texts this year. The biggest difference in me between the beginning of the year and now is I built up a habit to read. I used to hate reading because I thought reading was meaningless, and boring. Till the last term, I started to force myself to read 1 chapter per day. I found the importance and the advantages of reading. I also gradually enjoy reading since I found an interesting book to read. Now, I don’t have to force myself to read anymore. I motivate myself to read at least 15 minutes every day habitually. These are the dominant takeaways and changes throughout this year due to the English curriculum.

MYP 5 has been a memorable year. Many things have stuck with me throughout the months, both the good and the bad. Our English class has the latter. I think the biggest takeaway from English this year is the importance or reading. By now it has been drilled into our heads a hundred times that we must read 15 minuets each day. Reading is the key to our literary success. At the start of the year I hated having to read, it was a burden, I had to force myself to do it each and every time. I would procrastinate reading just a few pages that would take no less than 30 minuets of my time for hours. The middle of the year was similar, yet different. I would still hate reading however I would no longer put it off, I would no longer leave it at the bottom of my todo list. Instead I would make it a habit. Every night for 15 minuets as a bare minimum. By the end of the year it was a habit. I no longer had to think about it. I would just get into bed, grab whatever book I had been working on, and started to read. Yet I still disliked reading. I would take listening to an audiobook any day over reading a book. I wonder if I will ever enjoy turning those pages. I guess only time will tell. So there it is, reading has become a habit because of this English class and that is why, to me, consistent reading is one of the, if not the most important things I have learned this year. There are many things that I enjoyed about English this year but the one thing I will forever remember is the public speaking assignments. That feeling of nervous anticipation as you are waiting for the random spinner to decide the fate of a single person, will never be forgotten. The feeling of relief after you complete your minute of non stop talking will never be forgotten. After all how could this years MYP 5 English class ever be forgotten.

What I will remember from MYP5 is about WW I literature. I was able to learn about how the war terrible was by reading poems and watching movies. I was shocked about how young lives are easily taken by the war. The war is still happening between Russia and Ukraine, and it is heartbreaking for me to know that so many lives are being lost in this world today. And that there are people who are suffering sadly and painfully because of it.
I’ve learned this year that the more you read the book, the more you can gain vocabulary. I didn’t really read the book last year, and I was struggling about my vocabulary was really poor. However, by starting reading books every day, I gained vocabulary little by little, and now I know more vocabulary than last year. I’ve also learned that it is important to choose a book that has the same level or a little bit high level of vocabulary as to me. So that, I can gain new vocabulary by enjoying reading it. From next year, I am not going to take English A, but I still want to read books every day and gain vocabulary for DP studies.

I had thought it was a mistake to move up to this English literature class. However, I learned a lot because I did many things that were difficult for non-native speakers, and they were all new experiences.

Public speaking will be the most intense memory, both good and bad. Because of my nervousness, I was always being shakey, and couldn’t speak well every time. How much so, I was so nervous that I don’t remember the time. I was so embarrassed that I was terrible at speaking English, but I felt I wanted to improve my speaking skills at the same time. Then, I remember that I asked Mr.MacKnight how I would be able to speak English well. He recommended listening to and singing English songs, so I tried them. I think I did public speaking about three times, but I don’t think my speaking has grown that much. However, I did notice the difficulty of it and realized where I was lacking. These abilities only come with practice, and although they will not grow immediately, I will not be discouraged and will continue to work steadily on them.

Poetry was the most impressive learning for me. I never imagined that the day would come when I would learn poetry in English. If I had not come to this class, I probably would have never learned it, which is a rare opportunity for me. Maybe it was simply because I spent the most time on them, but it was really difficult to understand the poems, and the assignments about them were hard and incredibly painful.

At any rate, in every assignment, was really hard for me, and there were many times when I could not get good grades even though I tried my best. However, I am glad I took this class because I think I grew a little bit in every skill.

Reviewing all the assignments, assessments, and books that I have done and read. The assignment and book that made a great impression on me was Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley. Brave New World is one of my favorite books that I have read this year or even over the years that I have taken English literature. I still remember the story plot because it is intriguing. When I was reading it, I never felt bored. Also, the ideas conveyed by the author throughout the book were innovative, I have never read a book with such context and content before. Reading this book has shaped the pathway for my daily reading habit. I was not the kind of person who resists reading books that much but I only hate it when I read them for study purposes. However, the presence of Brave New World shapes my thought and greatly arises my interest in reading. After doing IRJEs and daily reading, I found myself having significant improvement in my reading speed, language organization skills, and the use of language.

The skills that I have taken away will stick with me if I study literature next year. The skill that I remember is using the present tense when I am writing literary reviews which is the one skill that my previous literature teacher didn’t teach me, I think this is an essential skill for me if I keep studying English literature. Another skill is that I need to practice writing in simple sentences and avoid making the sentence too complicated for the reader to interpret. This is something that I have an opportunity to improve throughout the MYP 5 curriculum because I have never done that much English writing and reading in my previous year of studying English literature. Also, plenty of literary readings have improved my skills of thinking in English instead of thinking in Chinese and translating them, it has greatly expanded my literary background knowledge which is able to contribute to my literary analyses.

Public speaking is also one of the main takeaways, it wasn’t that hard for me to speak in English because I have presented in English lots of times but public speaking is a totally different thing. The pubic speaking activity in term one guided me through every detail that can engage the audience more, for example, my pace, my body language, my eye contact, and my tone of voice. Also, I have learned how to suppress my nervousness while speaking and avoid stuttering.

With all these takeaways, I will continue to improve my writing and speaking skills in my English literature curriculum next year.

 

The thing that I will remember the most from this course is probably how I failed the first three summative assignments (At the beginning of the year, if I got higher than a 3, it was a good day). I will remember how I had to try to ask questions and think critically about any music that I listened to, or any book that I read. I had to do all of this just to make improve these skills. It was tedious and at times boring. I will also remember how every Wednesday night at around 10pm, I would open up my laptop and crank out a blog post, whether it be personal writing, a reflection, or an IRJE. This was the worst thing about the year. I was always exhausted and would forget about it, mostly due to procrastination, which is another habit I still have to kick. But for the most part, the thing I remember the most is the adjustments I had to make in order to succeed.

The thing that will stick with me the most is that procrastinating is an awful idea. I had a bad habit of this, especially at the beginning of the year, but it is slightly better now, but I still have a lot of room to improve. At my previous school, there was not a lot of work, and what little homework I was assigned, it wasn’t that hard. But then I came to this school. Now, I had a ton of work. Everything from weekly lab reports to critical analyses was fair game. I was used to rarely having any homework. In grade 9, there were 8 straight weeks I had zero outside of school work. I was used to barely having to do work, now I had to do more than I thought I would in grade 11 or even grade 12. But now, I have improved my work habits to an extent, but I still have a long way to go if I want to succeed in the Diploma Programme.

The thing I will remember most about English myp5 is probably is probably my first few weeks where it was a wild scramble for me as a new comer to this school. Looking back on it now how unprepared I was for it was hilarious to me now. Another thing I probably will remember are the things I had never done before in class like timed essays blog posting and public speaking. I have learned much of my time in myp5 English mostly have unprepared I am. Thought I did pick up some useful skill such as reading while English was not a direct cause of me reading it defiantly helped. The weekly writing was nice for experimenting and learning how to write a small quick piece of writing. These will probably stick with me for the amount of stress they caused me. The biggest thing I have learned in the way I should improve my writing, speaking skills as those are the skills I think I improved the most in over the course of the year. All in all this English calls was probably the one i learn the most in as my actions actually had short term consequences.

This year in english we went through many things, from war literature to dystopias and Utopias and concluding with love poetry. Going through these units I learned a lot of new things,  but there were three things that stuck with me the most. Firstly, I learned how to analyze poems. I  now know the right questions to ask about poems as well as the wrong questions to ask about poems. Learning this helped me to enjoy reading poems by paying closer attention to how something is written rather than what the meaning is.  Secondly, I learned that to improve writing skills, a lot of practice has to be done. Each week this year we had to publish something on the class blog. The time I took by writing blog posts sharpened my writing skills. Consistency will produce results. Lastly, I learned the proper structure of paragraph. Although I knew this before, this year something different that I learned was that simplicity is the key. Instead of including lots of unnecessary facts just to sound smart, the better thing to do is make your main idea clear. From English class this year my main takeaway is that by putting some effort and time into school, you can accomplish great things.

This was a very insightful year for me in English. I have covered books and topics that I hadn’t before, and it was a lot more traditional than what I was used to. Looking back, I think I will remember our last unit the most. Going over Romeo and Juliet, all the passion poems, ballads and other texts we read were exciting and fun to analyze. Creating literature that expresses emotions and making the reader feel something is hard to do, but fun to read, and I learned that, especially with our essay. The topics we’ve learned in this final unit will most likely stay with me for a long time, and I don’t think I’ll ever approach a poem the same again. Before, I would be intimidated and nervous about how and where to start thinking and analyzing. Now, thanks to all the work we did with them, I know what to look for and what mindset I should have when dealing with them. This year overall has allowed me to see literature from a new perspective, one that I think will improve and grow the more I continue in my English studies.

As the academic year of 2021-22 is coming to an end, it is time to look back on our journey. It has been a long year for many as we learn new languages, new concepts, and new cultures. MYP5 English is one of the subjects that many of us struggle to navigate through. We can all remember the time of being up in the front speaking to our peers time after time with the suspense of whos going to be next! Then, all of a sudden, we, the MYP5 English class are given the task to host the remembrance day ceremony. Itwasarushtryingtogeteverythingsorted… Ah, and that time when I did not exactly have the most appropriate wallpaper for remembrance day… But what really was fun is being given the opportunity to write whatever you want… Well almost… Some got removed (oops).

Although it has been a difficult year for all of us, especially in the beginning, we can all agree we have learned a thing or two. One personal thing I’ve learned is: Change my wallpaper before presenting, especially in formal settings. Of course, there are more important things I’ve learned such as quoting poems, writing in the first person, explaining my reasoning, and being analytical about pieces of writing.

During this year I’ve experienced a lot of moments and emotions, it is hard to choose something that I will remember the most but one thing that I will always remember is going to be the vocabulary sheets, the poems, independent reading, and personal writing.

One thing that I learned thanks to this class and is going to stick with me my whole life is going to be how to manage my time, which is something good because I can do more things. I had to do this here because with all the homework and my personal life I didn’t have enough time.