Introduction and Reflection Q4 Benchmark Portfolio

Jhonas Dunakin  6/1/11
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I’ve never really cared for the English language as most people do. I preferred Spanish among all other languages. Spanish has easy spelling in grammar, in order to spell a word you literally sound it out and that’s how you spell it. Conjugations are also very easy for me they come to me as quick as a rabbit hopping. But from my ninth grade experience at this school I’ve found a hidden love for English. That love for English you could say was hidden in a cocoon waiting to come out big and beautiful as you can see from my portfolio. My writing style changed and has become more meaningful than boring and dull. It has a certain piazzas that I’ve seemed to develop. As a young freshmen English student this portfolio shows my growth. It represents that through hard work and dedication you can achieve anything. I was never a good writer and through these projects and journal entries I learned to write with feeling and emotion in each word.

 

With this hidden love comes the exploration my strengths and weaknesses in English. I can’t spell to save my life, you can even ask my English teacher Ms. Dunn. We learned new complicated fancy words that we added to our vocabulary. We learned words like brood and Malinger. I had to use spell check for both of those words I can’t spell. With weaknesses includes certain strengths. A strength I find very useful is the ability to plan out what I want to write and how I want to write it. As I write this introduction I know how I wanted this to lay out and the style I wanted to write it in. I need to work on the vocabulary words we learned. They’re good words to know but I just can’t spell them.

 

This portfolio holds many memories both good and bad. Going through my work I look back and I remember the time when I was writing my me magazine. It was the first benchmark I have ever done. I sat there with a blank sheet of paper and thought to myself, what will my classmates think of me? What should I write? What will they think of me if I write this? But now I feel as if I can say or ask anything from my fellow peers. A bad experience I’ve had is frustration with my Character Comparison with my Odyssey project. Frustration will always get the best of you in every situation. There are a select few though that know how to deal with that frustration a positive way. I had to compare a character from the odyssey to another character. But I decided to take on the challenge of comparing a real life historical figure Al Capone with Odysseus. I was difficult comparing those, even though it might seem that they have lots of similarities at first they always connect with one being a real person and the other fictional. I eventually connected the two in the best way I knew how.

 

I’ve done so much work in for this class. It was exhausting but the feeling you get at the end of each project is amazing, it’s a feeling of accomplishment. The piece I’m most proud of has to be my character comparison. It may not be the most written but I spent hours on it, finding ways the two could connect. I got an 87 as a final grade for it but I accepted the challenge and I tried my best, and to me that’s what matters the most. Thank you Ms. Dunn for teaching me the beauty of English.

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