English+10

In English 10, the first major project of the year was the memoir. This was not an integrated project, and was strictly in English class. This project was a snapshot memoir of a single event in our lives. A snapshot memoir is usually only one page, and is only about a single event.

The purpose of the project was to increase our skills in writing. More specifically in writing, our skills with diction and imagery. The diction is important because it keeps the verbs and adjectives interesting, and aids with imagery. Imagery is important because it makes the reader trick themselves into thinking that they aren't just staring at a piece of paper. It adds sensual details to the writing.

This project was supposed to include a catchy beginning, diction and sensory details, and a fantastic ending. The beginning is the second-most important part of the writing, because without a good beginning, nobody will ever read the piece of writing. The diction is important because it keeps the writing from getting dull and repetitive. The imagery is extremely important because it keeps the reader's mind from getting bored. Without imagery, the writing is basically terrible. The ending was stressed as the most important part of the memoir, because it is what sticks in the reader's mind after he or she is finished reading. With a bad ending, the entire writing is bad.

The best thing that I learned during the project was how to use diction. I noticed a huge difference between the drafts with diction and the drafts without diction. I am very glad that I learned that, because now my writing has improved greatly.

The biggest struggle throughout the memoir was reducing the usage of "I." Part of the rubric was to have minimal usage of the pronoun "I" which was very difficult to do in a memoir.

In the beginning of the project, we did a short first draft. With each draft, the memoir was revised for structure, diction, imagery, focus, beginning, and ending. Each draft was uploaded to Pilot, and given feedback by the teacher, Ms. Reid. There was also a peer feedback session for cliches, repeating words, and pronouns. After about seven drafts and several issues of feedback, the final draft of the memoir was uploaded to Pilot.

One quality that I used in the making of this memoir was persistence. I used persistence in the editing and revising sections of the memoir. Editing for diction can be quite dull, so persistence was a necessity.