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Mario Bettaglio

Mrs. Crandall

AP Language

17 December 2019

AP Language Reflection

When I first picked AP Language as a class for my pathway I was nervous, since english

is my second language I have never considered language/literature classes as one of my best

subjects. I saw myself comparing to others, I looked at how unlike the others my writing style

was pretty simplistic and my vocabulary was very basic. So as a result I thought I wouldn’t do

the best when it came to AP Lang.

Once the semester started, I was a little clueless there were many things most people

understood that I didn’t, but that did not stop me. I came into this class with the goal of

improving my writing technique, so when I did not understood something I took the time to try

to understand it as much as possible. As the semester kept going we started learning about

rhetoric, at the start, I wasn’t able to understand it but as we kept going rhetoric started to

become more clear. I remember doing many assignments in the class that I felt as they did not

have a point and were merely just busy work, but when looking back at the now I’m able to

identify their purpose and how they helped me towards my writing ability.

Writing was not really something that I got really excited for mainly because when I was

given a prompt or text I would almost never understand the purpose of the author intended for

the text/prompt to have, but as time went by I started to understand the text and go more in depth
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of what I was being asked to analyze and/or create. I was able to make more complex and more

detailed arguments while using fragments from text, personal experiences and examples from

classes to support and make my argument coherent.

When I compare my beginning of the semester and myself now I feel that I have grown

so much as a writer, I feel now that I’m more capable of what I was able to do before. Unlike

before, now I now feel like I can understand text better and identify the purpose of each device

used in said text, I can go into detail when creating a claim and use rhetorical devices to create a

convincing argument, I can identify how characters in literature by the use of different devices

the author implemented on their text, and the list goes on. But that's not all, I did not just learn

english related material, this class helped me improve my skills as a person and student. I was

able to improve my time management by organizing myself and setting times to when to work

for certain papers, projects, and presentations. This class helped me improve my social skills to a

point that I felt I would never be able to reach, I was able to outright talk to people without

feeling uncomfortable, I was able to express my opinion to others without having to feel like I

need it to shape it in some way to appeal with the majority. And when it came to my life outside

of school I found myself using rhetoric without even realizing it, I would use when trying to

convince my parents to do something, when arguing with my siblings and friends and something

that I really enjoy till this day is looking for rhetoric in advertising and other types of media. I

have started to find it satisfying when I can tell someone is trying to use rhetoric on me and then

trying my best to also use rhetoric to nullify theirs.

In conclusion, I really do not regret taking this class at all. Although I felt nervous at the

beginning everything was well worth it, I learned to use new strategies, built up on the skills I
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lacked on, and finally I was able to grow as a writer and learned how to use the new skills and

implement them in writing and conversation/arguments.