Mary Zambrano Conversation 1

Summary

1. How does the author feel about her writing abilities?
At first Shannon was confident in her writing skills and that since she loved writing there was no way she was gonna fail the writing portion of the test. However, when she fails the test twice we can see how her confidence in her writing starts to decline and eventually affects her relationship with writing. "A poem I wrote was put on television once. I must have been a pretty good writer.Unfortunately the graders of the ninth-grade proficiency test didn't feel the same, and when students fail the test, the state of Ohio doesn't offer an explanation." This quote is a perfect example of Shannon's feelings with writing we see the change in emotion, from having your work published on national TV to failing an importance test twice and never getting a reason as to why.

2. Retell the author's journey as a writer.
When Shannon Nichols was a senior in middle school somewhere in Ohio she experienced what can be considered a life changing moment in a students life. She was an honor roll student and never had a GPA below a 3.0, she had been practicing for the ninth-grade proficiency test for months but when she took it she passed every part except the writing portion. Shannon was bewildered because she was confident in her writing, she always got A's in her English class, her work was published on TV, and most important she LOVED writing, so why? You see the state of Ohio doesn't offer explanations as why a student got what they got on a test so Shannon will never know why. However she didn't give up and instead she practiced even harder for the next round, unfortunately her hard work couldn't help her pass the second time. After knowing that she hadn't passed for the second time she went to her English teacher and told her, "How can I get A’s in all my English classes but fail the writing part of the proficiency test twice?” The teacher was just as shocked and couldn't give Shannon an answer. Shannon felt defeated and seeing how her classmates that were barely passing the eighth-grade pass the test in one go made her feel even more doubtful of her skills. Shannon took the test a third time without trying hard and managed to pass it but at what cost she had already started to hate writing and doubt her abilities as a writer. She decided that she wasn't going to take English as serious in high school and that got her a 2 on the Advanced Placement English Exam, she barely passed her senior year proficiency test, and she was placed in a developmental writing class in college. The thing that had a big impact on Shannon's relationship with writing was not knowing why she failed that test on the first try and as Shannon herself says, if she knew why then on her send try she would of written what was expected of her and maintain her love for writing.

3. If you were Mrs. Brown, the author’s English teacher, what would you say when the author asked: “How can I get A’s in all my English classes but fail the writing part of the proficiency test twice?”
I would of been speechless and I wouldn't be able to give her an answer, especially since this was really hard on Shannon I wouldn't want to give a response that would make her feel even more worse than she already does. Maybe I would of asked her for the questions on the test and make a mock test based on it and reassure her that it's not her fault and that just because she failed once it doesn't make her a bad writer. I would also explain how the grading criteria is different for the proficiency test and maybe the people that were grading her test just couldn't give her a passing grade because it didn't fit the rubric. In this situation it's hard to offer words of reassurement because one wrong thing and the student just feels even worse.

4.Has there been a time in your life when you doubted your abilities as a writer or in general? Explain.
All throughout elementary school I doubted my skills as a writer even though I enjoy writing more than reading. As a chid I always had problems with writing in English, in my defense English isn't my first language, so whenever we had a prompt my writing was always the worst out of all my classmates so over time I started to lose confidence in my writing skills. I always had problems with making my writing about the theme that is given, or I had to many run on sentences, or I wasn't using the correct grammar, etc. All of this just made me not want to write anymore and when I would take state tests or quizzes I'd just do what I can knowing I wouldn't get a good grade. This changed when I got to middle school and I got the right help to improve my writing and I once again started to enjoy writing and since then I can say I still enjoy writing.