Exam Reflection

  Generally speaking, I finished the two exams with mostly satisfaction. The test timing was managed and only few obstacles in generating ideas occurred. However, there were still a few things that could have been improved.
  Exam one was a smaller burden to me comparing to the second one. First of all, the questions given were not so hard to comprehend because of the level of vocabularies in them. I selected the third one which was the one that I thought the easiest one. "How does the author utilized the element of fantasy to better explain the story." The novel that I used - The whale rider has a substantial amount of fantasy inside, so it was much easier for me to write about it. I talked about two passages generally which was Chapter 17 and Chapter 18, and one of them specifically(18). The scenes described the ending part before the epilogue, where Kahu communicated with the whale and left the village with the accompany of it. The reason why I picked it is because that it's the climax of the story, which is really emotional and excited, also that it is great illustration of the essence of Kahu's(Maori) cultural background. I explained that it's quite "fantasy" that Kahu is able to communicate and travel with the whale herd.
  Exam two was a little bit more stressful because I ran out of ideas in the middle of writing. It was really a bad feeling because of the blank in my brain. However, it didn't last for a long time, so it didn't affect fluency. "How does the author utilize deep or sudden insights to make readers understand the novel." The controversy in this title to me was that everyone has different perspectives to the term "insight". But I expressed my own understanding to it in my article, I talked about how the two poets created insightful scenes in readers minds that help them understands the idea better by "looking" and "sense".
  The exams were definitely great reflections of what I have learned this year, and I can feel that my writing ability had improved but I still need deeper understanding to the spirit in the books/poems but not just words.