Summary
After reading the story "Proficiency" I believe the writer " Shannon Nichols" feels that her writing was like no other students. She had confidence and was sure her writing was nothing less than complete, writing is what she loved and was one of her strong suits besides math. In the text she says" It was one of my strengths. I was good at it, and I enjoyed it". Her passion was what had driven her so far to always be on the honor roll and write as much she did, until she had to take the proficiency test. The author " Shannon Nichols" feels that standardized testing doesn't prove she cant write, but how the people grading the test are not going to have the same mindset as her when writing. The author states that " I must have been a good writer. Unfortunately the graders of the ninth-grade proficiency test didn't feel the same". No one told her why she failed, so the more she worried the less she started to care why. If i were Mrs. Brown i'd tell Shannon " Don't let this test define who you are and that you can do this because you've achieved challenging goals before". I feel that my writing definitely needs more work, I tend to write run on sentences and have too many commas. I have a lot more to learn and do wish to have more confidence such " Shannon Nichols" in the Proficiency.
Literacy Response
One thought on “Sheliyah Jackson: Conversation 1”
I agree with you Sheliyah because as you mention that Shannon suits her writing compare to math also, how writing gives Shannon the confidence she needs when she had the honors because of how amazing job she did when having to complete a writing assignment. When the author talks about the feelings of the standards tests doesn’t prove she can’t write shows that Shannon doesn’t have the writing standards of what was expected. In this case Shannon wanted to understand why she failed but there was no answer provided to her. So she then began to not care because since she didn’t get a answer it then made her realize that she didn’t really enjoy writing as she did before. I agree that sometimes people can get affect by a test because then it can bring people to there downfalls. The reason why it’s important to set goals so that you are able to see how much progress you did over the year. Sheliyah I also be writing run on sentences which is what I want to improve on as well, so that my writing could make me feel confident just like how Shannon included on her writing.