Since my last “Response to Course Materials” we covered a lot of ground in AP English. Our class has read The American Dream by Edward Albee, we have learned what DIDLS stands for and how to apply it to literature, we analyzed we have learned about the literary eras and we have learned about critical perspective. I think learning the acronym DIDLS was the most helpful thing that we have learned so far. DIDLS stands for Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Syntax and these are very helpful literary elements to use when analyzing a piece of literature. I already have this phrase ingrained in my memory and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Now whenever I look at a piece of literature I try to identify all of these literary components and show how they relate to the meaning, and I think this is starting to become a natural instinct already. The part of DIDLS that I think I need the most work on is analyzing a piece of literature for its syntax and showing how this relates to the story. This is not very easy for me as I have never been trained to think in terms of sentence structure relating to meaning until this year. I think this will take a lot of work for me but with a little extra practice I think I will be able to start to get the hang of it. When we took the quiz on critical perspective I didn’t do as well as I had hoped. I think I need a little more work on memorizing these different critical lenses. It will be very useful to consider the lens being used so I can better identify the authors motivation in their writing. I think it is very important to know the general trends of each literary era because this will help me better understand the meaning or the motivation of the other. The literary trends sheet that we are working is definitely helping me to see trends over time of the literary eras and I think it will help make this information more concrete in my mind. The American Dream by Edward Albee was a very fun play to read in the class. After the first read through I did not really understand the meaning of it but after we read the paper that analyzed the story I started to understand it a lot better. The paper also helped me better understand what The Theater of the Absurd is the writer of the analysis was debating whether or whether not this book fit the qualifications. In the end the writer decided that it wasn’t truly absurd as the plot seemed to kind of go somewhere instead of going completely full circle. I think I will understand the themes of the story much better after a second read through. I have taken in a lot of information over the past few weeks and I just need to keep practicing these techniques I have learned to cement them into practice.
I agree with DIDLS being important. I think it's a very clever way to help us remember the literary elements we should look for when analyzing literature. I also think that I need to keep practicing these techniques so that I can do them automatically, especially when we get to the AP test.
ReplyDeleteWhen we first read through The American Dream, I was also very confused! This play didn't seem to make any sense at all, but after we started talking about it, everything started to make more sense. I hope that you understand this play better now that we have discussed it.
I also thought that DIDLS was the most important thing that we learned in the last few weeks. Just like you said, whenever I see a piece of literature, I start analyzing it. It's gotten a lot easier to recognize some of these things, too. I wrote about the literary trends worksheet that we did in class too, and I found that very helpful. It helps to know the trends when analyzing a piece of work. It helps you see a lot of the allusions and things in the text. As for The American Dream, I thought it was really interesting. I didn't understand it at first. I have never read anything like it, but like you said, reading the articles in class and discussing it more helped a lot!
ReplyDeleteI also think that the "S" (syntax) in DIDLS might be one of the more difficult things to learn. For every other part of the acronym, diction, imagery, details, and language; we have been previously introduced these points. But syntax is something that I also need to work on this year.
ReplyDeleteThe Theatre of the Absurd paper made my brain hurt, but after we discussed the points in the article for a few weeks, (and its relation to The American Dream), I understood the concept a little better.