This year for our English portfolio, our (Mr. Luizzi's) class has been assigned to place all of our work on a web page to allow quick access to everything we write over the course of the 1998-'99 school year. And since this particular page is the introduction to what will be my portfolio, it seems appropriate to "introduce" myself...
And so, first of all, my name is Matt Sullivan and I am currently a sophomore at Newtown High School. Although it may be a suprise to you, writing papers for english is not what I prefer to do with my time... I enjoy wrestling and playing lacrosse but since this page isn't about either of those things, it is now time again to go back to writing about english...
In English I, last year's english class, the students were emerged, far more than before, in the five aspects of english, them being reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. And for each of these five branches, many new challenges were presented and by consistently rising to those challenges and doing very well in fulfilling (and sometimes surpassing) all of the requirements, I was able to have a successful freshman year.
While I have throughout my english career been particularly successful in the writing aspect and although I was able to carry that over last year, it quickly became the greatest challenge to myself. The reason for this was that when first introduced to it, I was not very comfortable with either writing nor interpreting poetry, something that with practice I was eventually able to over come. However, I had been comfortable with reading and anylizing novels and short stories and so I was able to do well with these from the very beginning. And because of this I expect to, and hope to read more novels in class than was done last year, and I will openly except the challenge of writing in depth analysis on the reading material, in hopes of bettering myself in each of the reading and writing aspects of english.
Listening, speaking, and viewing had always been handeled in my previous english classes strictly through class discussions, something I had grown accustomed to and something I was growing in. And although this was also done throughout last year's course, at the end of the year when the "I-search" project was introduced, I was forced to apply each of these branches in a whole new way. I had to learn how to become an effective public speaker as well as a good listener when another classmate was speaking. Also, because many students included visual representations of their findings, I had to begin to associate and connect what I was viewing with what I was hearing, which was difficult at first but after ten or so presentations, became involuntary.
Thus, this year I expect to have each of these aspects of English presented to me with new challenges associated with each of them, because I know that I will only grow if I am challenged. And, then, to go along with that, I understand that I will be expected to work hard in order to allow that growth to occur. Although at this time this (the work) isn't something that I am particularly looking forward to, I know that at the end of this sophomore year, when all the assignments are complete, the rewards from having done it to my full capacity will have been very much worth the work.