Summary
In the article “Proficiency”, the author Shannon Nichols explains her personal experience as writer during high school in Ohio, the author first describes her experience taking the ninth-grade proficiency test during eight grade, that test ultimately determines whether the may obtain a high school diploma. Even though she was really confident that’s she was going to pass the writing part of the test due to her great writing abilities, she ended up failing the writing part and she saw herself disappointed, specially when she realizes that most of her classmates who barely passed the eight grade English class passed the writing test. That made her to lose her love and passion for writing.
She finally goes over it and starts to study harder on her English class to get a better result on her next test but she fails again with only 4.5 of the 5 points needed to pass. Even though she finally passed in the third try, she never felt the same love that she always had for reading and writing.
In one part of the article, Shannon asked her English teacher,Mrs. Brown, “How can i get A’s in all my English classes but fail the writing part of the proficiency test twice?”. If i were Ms. Brown i would tell her: “Don’t give up, keep working hard and don’t let an exam define who you are”.
About my writing abilities, i feel like I don’t have a nice vocabulary, but i always do my best to improve it. Sometimes i feel scared to speak in public because of that.
