Poetry Study Goals

• Think about what the author is trying to say
• Work on reading poems sentence by sentence, not line by line
• Look at the title - it may hint at what a poem is about
• Find evidence in the poem to back up my answers
• Review basic literary terms

Although I really like reading poetry I need to work on reading for answering questions, not just enjoyment. Slowing down, making sure I understand, and being able to pinpoint evidence to back up my answers may be obvious, but it's essential. Like I mentioned in my diagnostic test blog, learning more poetry terms would help me understand the questions better.

Diagnostic Test

WELL...My ego just took a bit of a bruising. Although my final score wasn't totally miserable, the test definitely hit me where it hurts.

• I usually consider vocabulary (be it required terms or fun expressions) one of my strong points and a good chunk of the questions I got wrong were because I was a little fuzzy on the basic terminology. I already looked at some of the other word files on the website and found the definitions to the words I didn't know on the Terms Test Info Sheet.
• Another part of the test I loved/hated was the poetry. Because I'm a very visual person I loved the imagery in "Night Clouds" but I think I got a bit lost in the inferences and definitions for "Forbidden Mourning". (Because I liked both poems so much I probably spent too much time rereading them for fun.)
• I did really well on Pride and Prejudice, but that's probably because I've read the book so many times and I really like the dynamic between Mr. and Mrs. Bennett. I did slip up on a few questions because I answered based on my knowledge of the whole book, instead of focusing on that particular section.
• To be perfectly honest, when I finally got to Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology I was totally bored. I was more focused on getting through that section and finishing the test than on what was being asked.
• This might sound a little weird, but I've always found reading/comprehension/English tests fun. I really like reading little snippets of different writing styles, so I enjoyed taking this test.

Overall, if I had read the passages and questions more carefully and taken my time on some of the more frustrating sections, I probably would have gotten a better score.

Testing, testing, one, two, three...

MooooOWWeeeeeEEEEnnnneeeeeeeEEEEddddTooooFiiiiiindHiiiisssSssooooonnnn. CooommmeBaaaAAAAAACK. Hmm - maybe a different dialect...Maybe I should try Humpback......WwAAA! MMmmwwaaaahhh! Too much Orca. Didn't that sound a little Orca-ish??? - Dory (Finding Nemo)