My learning

English A Language & Literature I

[avictoriaorozco]

“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree”

Ezra Pound

[avictoriaorozco]

Final Reflection

The course English A Language & Literature taught different ways of understanding the world. Mainly I would say that it helped me question and analyze the importance of texts in everyday life. It taught me that texts are not only extended and traditional literary works, such as books and novels, but that literature can be found in mangas, movies, comics, music, series, memes, social media, speeches, video games, and almost everywhere around us. With literature being so close to us so frequently I believe that it is fundamental to question the reasons behind everything and to deeply analyze what we are consuming and watching every day. The course helped me understand better the aspects to consider in every work and text and made me question matters from entertainment and advertisement to global importance. From this class, I take away the passion for literature and the idea of analyzing texts with consciousness, sensitivity, intelligence, and the tools and skills for each type of expression. I believe that the role of literature in today’s society should be more appreciated and explored, as traditionally it can be perceived as boring or just regular books, but literature consists of exploring more types of text and having a deeper understanding of the media that surrounds contemporary society nowadays. Regarding the specific topics of the subject, it is hard to summarize everything that we explored and learned. We began by reading a manga a type of text I had never read before and that found very interesting it was different even from the way of reading, I really enjoyed every part of it and was able to analyze the aspects that made this text special, we learned from Japanese literature and culture and the transformations that manga has had. Next, we explored the elements of movies and series, composition, music, cinematography, and photography among other elements. Movies are something I already enjoyed and knew about so it was one of my favorite parts of the course because it helped me analyze even better aspects that I had not considered before. Another one that I loved was songs, that even though I am very passionate about music I did not know a lot of the process behind and the composition so it helped me appreciate artists and music from a different perspective. Society’s ideals are deeply influenced by media, in the most recent years, especially social media. Information flows in different ways as it is used in the past and memes and advertising are a fundamental part of it, something that made me usually laugh and felt unimportant turned out to have a deeper meaning and composition. Finally, we saw video games, which from my perspective are a complete form of art. I took a programming class and I believe that it is truly a way of expressing feelings that contains every aspect that is commonly considered art. I would personally say that the English A Language & Literature course was not what I expected at the beginning and that it changed my life and way of perceiving the world. It was probably my favorite class and I am very grateful for all the knowledge and experience I gained from it.

[avictoriaorozco]

Persepolis Reflection

Persepolis is a graphic novel that represents a lot of emotions and a part of the life of Marjane Satrapi and many other aspects of Iranian culture and the consequences of the revolution for the people. I personally really enjoyed the graphic novel as at the beginning it has many relatable thoughts for young women, however, in the first part of the novel there is presented the conflict of the Iranian revolution. “One can forgive but one should never forget.” (Satrapi). In this phrase, Marjane Satrapi establishes that although one can forgive something it will always be part of their identity and it is essential to have a memory as it transforms oneself, revealing that their history influences who they are as a person. In Persepolis through the drawings and plot, Marjane Satrapi portrays how culture and conflicts influence her identity. Persepolis is a graphic novel that narrates the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi. The events happening around Marjane’s life are a direct factor that influences her identity. At the beginning, it is shown Marjane’s childhood while she grew up in Tehran, the capital of Iran. It is presented that when the 1979 Iranian revolution against the Shah who is the ruler of Iran begins, her family is very involved in the protests and movements. The involvement of her family makes young Marjane aware of what’s happening and begins shaping her ideas of freedom surrounding the revolution. Scenes later her uncle Anoosh arrives to have dinner with the family, he was released after being nine years in prison. Anoosh is an inspiration for Marjane as he explains to her how the government wanted to catch him and how the revolution is advancing. The perspective of her family on the revolution are the first ideas that influence Marjane’s identity, while she begins to discover for herself how the conflicts in Iran affect her way of living. Marjane’s actions are shaped by the limitations of her culture and conflicts in her state. Marjane’s early teen years where she is confident and rebellious, as she illegally buys western music, clothes and supports western artists, things that are prohibited and punished by the government. As Marjane grows she begins developing her own ideas and likes. Despite that the Iranian government restricted the things people could have access to, this could work as limiting for what Marjane thinks and beliefs, however, she goes the other way around skipping the rules and searching for what she enjoys, influencing her oneness. The culture and government’s restrictions transform Marjane’s identity even though they limit her choices and try to impose a way of thinking at the end they have a huge impact but opposite of what they wanted. To conclude Persepolis creates a relation between how someone’s history influences their perspective of the world and therefore the identity of the main character. Satrapi explains how the conflicts in Iran and the conservative culture of Islam influenced her early life experiences and transformed her way of thinking and acting, even though she left her origin country her history accompanied her to other places, demonstrating that these experiences determine one’s own recognition despite them being in the past, the experiences will always be part of one’s identity.

[avictoriaorozco]

Songs & Music Reflection

This topic was one of my favorites, music is something that I personally really enjoy. I like investigating the artist, analyzing the lyrics, and constantly listening to the changes in sound, however, I did not know a lot about music theory or the process behind composing a song. Through this unit, we studied the principal elements of music, from the rhythm, melody, harmony, lyrics, the story, the tone, among the other elements of songwriting. We deeply analyzed the techniques used in different genres and types of music, in class we listened to various songs from different artists and decades seeing what elements helped convey the message. An interesting example was the United States national anthem which can be interpreted in many different ways. We saw the guitarist Jimi Hendrix's interpretation, with a very powerful guitar solo which was particular because the electric guitar was a little bit off-tune, giving a distinct sound. In contrast, Lady Gaga also interpreted the national anthem in a different way within the band that accompanied her singing and the emotional voice that she used, the chords were different than the traditional way of playing the anthem. Both of these interpretations had a significant impact because the national anthem was created many years ago and the history of the United States has questionable morals and events, like racism and discrimination, therefore new interpretations may have statements against these morals. We analyzed the different styles and the characteristics that may distinguish particular genres and even artists, with my partner Fati we worked listening to Lorde’s music identifying elements that make her music unique and different from other popular artists, an interesting aspect that we found out was the elements of her composition, in a lot of her songs there is the use of Mixolydian mode, which is a type of major scale in which the leading tone used relentlessly in pop music to build tension and yearning is replaced by a flat seven. The Mixolydian is a primary part of blues music as well as much of early rock music, but it is not as common in modern-day pop music, hence Lorde bringing back this sound allowed her to have a great connection with the audience.

It was very interesting to explore the elements that influenced the way that songs convey meaning because I have always been interested in music and its manifestations. I enjoyed discussing the multiple characteristics of music and how it works to give meaning to us.

[avictoriaorozco]

Reflection 1 (V Semester)

In everyday life we constantly read and see hundreds of pieces of information that have different hidden meanings from what we might expect, even in everyday conversations we are using language and discourse to communicate our ideas. 

We began by analyzing advertisement which I believe is deeply linked with subtext and discourse as these have to be used to produce successful advertising campaigns that can convince a big audience to adquiere the product, service or idea ,as we saw last semester in propaganda, that we are trying to sell. 

During this term we have analyzed and learned the different elements of advertisement, the characteristics that distinguish a good advertisement campaign and why others fail. We identified elements from both printed and recorded ads. In class we watched the top 10 of the best and worst commercials of all time, we observed some awful campaigns that did not accomplish the purpose of promoting and selling the product, having very confusing messages and bizarre elements that sometimes turned out to be annoying for the audience. I really enjoyed the activity where we selected our own “Top 10 Ranking Advertising” as there are many memorable and spectacular advertisements I have seen on TV through the years, so it was interesting analyzing the reasons why I enjoyed them and if they used specific resources to appeal to the audience.

After analyzing the elements of advertising and what makes a successful campaign, now we have started to create our own campaign considering different ethics aspects as well as the message behind what is being presented. This behind meaning can be associated with subtext and discourse as the words and phrases being used are not randomly selected, they have a purpose that is slightly hidden behind the explicit message. In this period we investigated and understood the meaning of discourse, the different types of discourse and their main functions. We also studied the different types of meaning in semantics, topic from which I had heard of but I did not know that there were seven main meanings and how each of them was used.

In this unit I learned that it is very important to analyze what we read in our everyday life as constantly messages can have a planned discourse that at first sight we might not identify, therefore contemplating the behind meaning can help us to understand and communicate more successfully our ideas and to critically analyze the real meaning of the information that is presented in front of us.

[avictoriaorozco]

Reflection 3 IV Semester

Society is always changing and seeking for new ways of expressing, through time there are different ways of interpreting life and manifesting ideas through art and our way of living. During this second term we learned about postmodernism, which is a movement which was present around the last half of the 20th century, and it is still an influence till today. Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism, which rejects previous ideas from modernism and critics ideologies, philosophies, morals, reality and human nature itself. It is deeply influenced by the idea that things can have multiple meanings and interpretations. Some of the main characteristics in postmodernism are being skeptical, ironic, morally relativistic, being chaotic and questioning the established knowledge. 

Constant approaches in postmodern art are, deconstruction which is a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression, therefore a way of challenging the traditional and accepted concepts. Another characteristic is retrieving works from previous authors and incorporating them into new creations, this is known as pastiche, it can either imitate or take elements and then mix them. Similarly intertextuality incorporates references to other works in a text. Other characteristics include subversion, metafiction, breaking the fourth wall, self-awareness and other expressions following the same critical thinking.

During this term we studied and read work by Margaret Atwood which included many of the characteristics of postmodernism as she frequently makes reference to other texts and traditional thoughts in her creations. I believe that the feminist theory is very related with postmodernism and Margaret Atwood’s texts as it questions and critics traditional persception of women and it deconstructs the way of interpreting the world through every perspective and not through the domination of the traditional white male. The main focus of Feminist literary criticism is to extend the concern with how literature and other cultural productions reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women. Many feminists identified through this approach that the values that were passing as universal were actually very based on the patriarchy. Feminists argued that books that were considered valuable were restricted by the cultural view of the elite of white ruling-class men, and rejected other literature that transcends ideology and have an aesthetic value. Therefore “feminists called into question the standards of value and the material conditions according to which texts are written, published,  interpreted, preserved, and canonized” (Lanser 4). I think that Margaret Atwood can be a feminist writer as she exposes the whole damaged system based on the patriarchy. I identified that through many of her writing she uses an ironic and sarcastic tone to criticize the absurdness of the portraing of women in many stories. At the same time she writes about more difficult topics such as sexual abuse and the objectifying of women, all of these texts come of as a critic of the centristic view that is often critized by feminist literary critics. 

I personally really enjoy postmodernism as it is a very interesting approach and perspective of life, that questions and challenges reality frequently. I also relate and like feminist theory as it offers a different approach, that for me previously was harder to identify and makes me question the standards that I thought as normal and correct, it has made me change my way of thinking and perceiving what I learn. I feel like postmodernism is an invitation to both appreciate and criticize previous ways of thinking by questioning the absurdness of reality as the complexity of life cannot be understood through a singular reality.

[avictoriaorozco]

There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false

Harold Pinter

[avictoriaorozco]

Reflection 1 IV Semester

In this first register we explored the main characteristics of poetry, previously I had studied characteristics of poetry but only in spanish so learning them in english was very interesting and exciting. We learned about the rhyme scheme of a poem and how it is very well structured to give each word a meaning. The form and structure of a poem besides giving it a more aesthetic form, also helps convey meaning, as it can represent conversations and thoughts or mark the tone of the poem’s general theme. I understood how the authors give rhythm to the poems to make them sound more aesthetically pleasing. Poetry uses characteristics of language to give very deep meaning to some of the most universal and timeless themes that frequently artists explore, love, death, the soul, religion, god, life, among many others. Poetry uses rhetorical figures to transform regular writing and transform them into meaningful phrases that evoke feelings, this allows poetry to express more accurately the most complex emotions through specific choice of words. The main author we studied this register was John Donne who is considered one of the greatest poets of english language in the 17th century. He is an English poet born in 1572 to Roman Catholic parents, when practicing that religion was illegal in the country. One of the most important characteristics of  Donne’s poetry is that a lot of his poems are part of metaphysical poetry which explore very deep meaning questions, are all highly intellectualized, use not so common imagery, frequently use paradox and contain extremely complicated thought. John Donne writes very complex poems where you can find tons of rhetorical figures in each line, and often uses paradoxes to convey the most intricate thoughts through history, like the meaning of love for example. For me one of the biggest challenges was understanding the differences between XVII century english and modern english. When we began seeing the differences I felt very confused as there are many words that have evolved since then as well as the structure of phrases, the pronunciation and conjugation of words. After we read some poems it started getting easier and little by little you can remember the variations and understand more clearly everything, I enjoyed that at the end I remember a lot more of the most frequent variations like pronouns and conjugation. Another important aspect is that while reading XVII century poems it is very useful to search for the meaning of words that are not very common in modern english, despite that you can understand the meaning by the context it is helpful to have a further understanding of what the poet was trying to convey. Finally I believe that I have achieved a better understanding of poetry in general and develop better comprehension of Literature, I really enjoyed poetry as it is a part of literature that can express some of the deepest human emotions, despite that I found it very complex it is very interesting to explore how timeless a poem can be and regardless of the space and time difference I can relate to the meaning of the poems.

[avictoriaorozco]

Final Reflection 3rd semester

In this semester I learned a lot of things, I consider I really improved my essay writing. Even though it was the last class every day I looked forward to it every day as it is an exciting class that was not as exhausting as I thought. At the beginning I was very nervous that I would not be able to read everything that we were required to, or that it would be a very complicated class, however, I found out there were very considerable due dates with enough time to turn in assignments. In the class, I think that something interesting that I reflected on was, on what is considered to be literature and how we can explore visual texts like movies, series, and mangas, through a literary perspective, as it is possible to analyze every shot, lightning, camera movement, angle, and even every sound. One aspect that I enjoyed about the class was hearing others perspectives both my classmates and teacher, through the class discussions it was interesting to hear what they thought on the subject, as even though we read the same texts everyone interprets them differently, I did not participate as much as I would like to as sometimes I am shy, but I hope that next semester I’ll improve in this aspect. I also enjoyed the peer review as it helped me see my classmate’s essays to identify things that could be improved and therefore I could also identify how my essay was looking. I believe the class helped me create relations between literary work and the meaning the author was conveying and how it relates to our everyday lives, and develop a more critical understanding of very different kinds of texts. I hope to continue learning many new things and improving every day.

[avictoriaorozco]

Reflection 3

I enjoy that in the class we not only review traditional written texts but also graphic novels and now visual texts which are another form of communicating feelings and ideas to the viewer and are in reality very complex when analyzing every single aspect of them.

I have always been a fan of watching movies and series, from different genres, styles, and critics from the audience, from very popular films to the few they show in the art sala at the cinemas, however, I had never deeply analyzed which aspects we can consider to evaluate what makes a good or bad visual text.

Last year we learned a little bit about cinematography, about composition, and some shots but this term I learned how these distinct shots can convey different meanings. Also, I was able to identify other essential aspects of an audiovisual text like the music and sound and finally how the editing, can completely alter how the final product expresses meaning.

My favorite aspect of cinematography is that the resources used are a lot of times subconscious, with this I mean that maybe when instantly seeing it you may not notice the elements but you can interpret the feeling, but when carefully analyzing the scene you can identify elements like how the angle of a shot can convey a specific feeling, for example in a dutch shot as it is slightly tilted it creates a feeling of unsteadiness, and like this example, there are many others with every different type of shot. The lighting of a scene can completely change the scenario and direction of the shot, and without music, the emotions presented would not be as intense and relatable as when it has a good soundtrack. 

Now when I am watching a visual text I am more aware of the characteristics it has and the decisions the director made to convey his idea in the final product, I feel that what can elevate a visual text is the attention to the details, as every small detail can be very important for giving the correct sensation and meaning to the visual text.

[avictoriaorozco]

Reflection 2

During the last three weeks of class, I’ve learned a lot about essay writing, in the past, I have written many essays but honestly not that conscious about every sentence. My perspective changed mostly in the process of writing, I believe I have learned a lot about the steps to write a better essay and in an easier way. For example, before I have noticed that I have a lot of problems when writing to keep my ideas organized, focused, and to keep in mind everything that I wanted to mention. I feel that my strenghts in writing are choosing interesting topics from de reading, writing, and explainig after I have the main ideas and writing without emotionally charged words when needed. My areas of opportunity are in creating better-structured sentences when writing the essay, and delimiting better my ideas. The steps that the teacher showed us especially helped me, and I believe they are very useful first creating a good thesis statement allows to create an interesting and well written essay, I personally had some trouble establishing my thesis statement, as I had many ideas in mind but this helped to limit what I wanted to show in my essay. Then writing the outline, I used to do something similar to an outline I writed my main ideas for the essay and the parargraphs, but I did not ordered them or gave them a nice structure. Creating the outline helped organize my ideas and have a better structure for the essay in general. One thing that a enjoyed was writing various drafts and the peer review, I feel like this helped improve the essay each time and work on it an apropiate amount of time. The peer review allowed me to see a different perspective from mine an identify some mistakes in my own writing, and I was also able to see and read what my partner was writing, I feel it is very good to see a different point of view. Finally, in the second draft the teacher’s feedback allowed me to improve my essay and see my areas of opportunity. 

My thoughts on Manga after reading Monster changed as I had never given me the opportunity to explore this type of novel, I really enjoyed the art and the way of telling the story. Is a diferent type of reading and experience. I personally liked Urasawa’s writing and how he explored profound questions of humanity, he esencially explored human nature, and this novel in particular I believe that feels very realistic, as there is no fiction and it represents life as it is. I personally liked the ending itself, as life doesnt have an specific end, it keeps moving, but at the same time, I did not liked it because I would have enjoyed that Urasawa explained more the last chapters and that it gave some closure to some characters and situations. I think that what I learned from Monster was that to experience something we need to know the opposite, there is no hapinnes without knowing sadness and that in life nothing is either completely good or bad, black or white, right or wrong, is always about a mixture or balance to experience and face life itself. 

[avictoriaorozco]

R e f l e c t i o n 1

At the beginning of the course, I was nervous that it would be very difficult but after the past three weeks, I feel that it is an amazing opportunity to improve my skills and learn more about language and literature.

I have reassured my definition of literature. It was very enriching to hear my classmates and teacher perspectives to explore aspects that I had not considered before. Such aspects could be how subjective it can be and what characteristics could be checked to evaluate a literary work. The discussion helped me to clarify and comprehend more what is literature. For me, literature must have the purpose of making the reader feel something, imagine things, and change their way of perceiving the world. It could go from a blog entry like this one to complex novels. 

I had never read a manga before so at the beginning, it was a little confusing to read from right to left and to read the panels in the correct order. After studying more about the elements of graphic novels now I can identify these elements while I am reading. Graphic novels are able to convey stories more explicitly. I feel like it is almost like watching an animated sequence. Through the illustrations, the author can express feelings in the character’s faces, establish the scenery in a drawing, and even add sounds and special effects to the situation. 

In my perspective, graphic novels are easier to read and engage as compared with traditional novels. In traditional novels, authors have to describe with extensive detail each place, character, expression, tone, and situation to allow the reader to imagine what's being narrated. I personally do not believe that one is better than the other, they are different experiences.

In Naoki Urasawa graphic novel Monster. Urasawa uses literary elements like onomatopoeias to transmit the sensations through the texts and drawings. Urasawa makes us experience the fear, pain, doubt, anger, and sadness that the characters are experiencing. In Monster, there are diverse stories with many characters that interact in different times and situations. It can be a little bit tricky to keep track of each character but the drawings make it easier to identify them.

I definitely would consider Monster as literature as it transmits feeling with the extra feature of illustrations. The dialogues and details are perfectly planned to deliver a really entertaining story. Graphic novels are just another way of telling a story by using visual resources and not only written words. I personally really enjoyed  Urasawa’s style of writing and drawing. I would enjoy exploring more of his work. I have the sensation that every detail is planned and at the end of Monster, everything will connect and make sense. I cannot wait to finish reading and continue learning.

[avictoriaorozco]

“I truly believe that no other medium allows creators to express their ideas as efficiently as manga”

Naoki Urasawa