This page shows the academic work of Joonyong Choi in the English subjects throughout his high school years.
English
9th Grade
Honors English & Writing
During my freshman year, I took the Honors English & Writing course for the English subject. This course was an introductory English course for high school students, but it was highly challenging as it was an Honors class. In the course, I studied The Odyssey, science fiction texts, poetry, and nonfiction. I mostly learned how to analyze these different texts and see texts from multiple perspectives of different characters. Furthermore, I have also done long-term projects such as the Racism Interview project (attached in the video below), in which I had to find an interviewee outside of school and interview about a certain social issue or topic. My interviewee was Phan Le Minh, a Vietnamese businessman working in South Korea, and the topic for the interview was racism in South Korea. I interviewed him for an hour and edited it out to a 10-minute video for submission. Through these kinds of large-scale, long-term projects, I enhanced my English speaking skills and learned how to analyze certain texts or social issues in a proper way.
10th Grade
Honors English
For my 10th-grade English subject, I took the Honors English course. This course was primarily focused on reading books each quarter and completing related assignments, projects, and essays related to those texts. In the first quarter, I read Julius Caesar in full text and analyzed each character’s actions, thoughts, and perspectives during the last period of the Roman Republic. In the second quarter, I read the Lord of the Flies by William Golding. In this quarter, the main focus was to answer the essential question, “Deep down, are we all savages?” After reading the book as a class, I have done in-class projects related to the book and the essential question, such as creating paper posters. In the third quarter, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
and researched the ethnic conflicts within Afghanistan as an in-class project. My specific research topic was “What are the fundamental causes of the conflicts between Pashtuns and Hazaras in Afghanistan?” Finally, in the final quarter, I read The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride and have completed projects such as research about systematic racism (attached as pdf).
11th Grade
AP English Language and Composition
For my junior year English subject, I took the AP English Language and Composition course. This course was a highly challenging course as it focused on preparing for the AP English Language & Composition Exam in May 2023. In the first quarter, I studied the various rudimental rhetorical devices used in English essays. I initially memorized their definitions and familiarized myself with the devices by looking at multiple sentence examples. Then, I practiced writing a formal rhetorical analysis essay. In the second quarter, I learned about argumentative essays, a familiar format for me. I studied how to craft arguments, related evidence, and examples to support those arguments. In the third quarter, I studied and practiced how to write synthesis essays, which was basically an argumentative essay with reading material to use as supporting evidence for my arguments. I have done multiple practices in this unit, including the Essay Rewrite (attached as pdf), in order to enhance my writing skills as well as writing speed for the preparation of the AP Exam. The last quarter was a review and practice quarter for everything I learned throughout the previous three quarters. While learning about writing, we also did some fun projects. In the first semester, I did a Video Proposal Project in which I proposed taking a short nap during school time to reduce the stress of students. During the second semester, I did a Group Video Presentation Project regarding the topic of “Managing Sewage for Our Future.” Together with my partner Stella, I researched the problems of current sewage systems and proposed alternative sewage systems that could make our society sustainable.
