My Strengths and Weaknesses!♥

So far, I have written two essays in my tenth grade English class. The first one was an in-class short story literary essay and the second one was related to the themes of Antigone. In both essays I had my strengths and weaknesses, which I can hopefully improve on by the end of the school year.

Strengths: Usually when I write about a topic that interests me and that I am passionate about, I can write more and connect more with it, which, overall, makes my writing better. Overtime, I've become better at including examples in my essay to help with the reader's understanding. I feel like this has become one of my strengths. I am also quite good at coming up with lots of ideas (but that can sometimes be a problem) and I can develop them pretty well! When it comes to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, I usually do well and have no problems! Just need to pay attention to my weaknesses!

Weaknesses: One problem I've always had with my essays is including advanced and difficult vocabulary. I always use simple words and don't usually have a variety. This is one of my major weaknesses, which I really have to work on. Another significant weakness is that I'm not always able to develop my ideas in an organized and coherent way and keep one idea per paragraph. I tend to include information that sometimes doesn't relate to the topic sentence or thoughts being conveyed in the paragraph. Lastly, I do not always go into depth with my arguments and information. I think that if I really focus on those weaknesses I can definitely improve by the end of the year, and in the future, as I write more and more essays and work on different types of formal writing.

Xtranormal Reflection! ♥

After reading the Greek tragedy, Antigone, my group and I decided that one scene in particular was interesting and important, so we chose to make our Xtranormal video based on it. This was the scene where Haimon and Creon had an argument about Antigone being sent off to die just because she had buried her beloved brother Polyneices. In my opinion, this scene is very significant to what follows afterwards. Firstly, from this argument, the audience learns that Haimon has such strong feelings for Antigone that he is willing to go against his father's beliefs and die by her side. In addition, Creon did not change his mind after Haimon told him that he supports Antigone. This shows that Creon is so headstrong and stubborn that he doesn't even want to give in to his own son. This scene leads to the climax of the tragedy where Creon finds his son, wife, and Antigone dead and realizes he had been the one who was mistaken all along. Another point this scene reveals is that Creon is against women and thinks that they are inferior to men. This point gives us more information about Greek society and their beliefs, values, etc. As we have learned in our Social Studies class, the Greek society was misogynistic; literally meaning hating or disliking women. These points made this specific scene interesting to my group and that is why we chose it!

By using different cinematic techniques, our video became more meaningful. We added pauses between every comma, full stop, and other places where we felt were necessary. And we also added facial expressions and physical actions throughout the speeches. This made their speeches more realistic because otherwise they talked extremely fast and continuously. For the two characters, we chose two different actors (one with droopy ears, and the other with pointy ears) and each had a different voice range. This makes it easier for the audience to distinguish the two. Also the droopy ears for Haimon symbolizes the fact that he is inferior to Creon who has pointy ears. And lastly, we used several camera angles; many close-ups, and some long-shots. The angles that focus on one character at a time help the audience to pay all their attention to that one character. And the long-shots help show the distance between the two characters, which help determine their relationship. These cinematic decisions made our video more realistic and full of impact!

Haimon vs. Creon! ♥