Final Log.

My project, writing movie reviews, was enjoyable and meaningful work to me. I chose this project because I love to watch movies. Through out three months of working on the project, I'v learned many things that I'v never had chance to learn. Watching a movie and writing a review about it was not a simple work. Before starting the project, I thought my project would be so easy because watching movies was my favorite thing to do and it was what I do for every weekend. However, I didn't know about how to watch a movie properly. First, I had to know what are real good movies. I went to library and picked up two books. I read two books. One is David Thompson’s “Have You Seen…”, which helps me to understand the classic story and structure of American Hollywood films. It provided examples of past movies that were highly rated. Also, it gives me information about how to watch movie properly, such as good environment for watching movie. The other book, “Bowling, Beatniks and Bell-Bottoms” gave me basic idea about American 20 century pop culture, which tells me what kind of things appealed people in the movies. Reading these books really helped me and it involved some reading skills. The most important thing for my project was to choose movies. I tried to watch various genre of movies: action, thriller, comedy, romantic, horror, and SF. In order to pick good movies, I had to get some recommendations from my friends. Many people suggested their favorite movies. I watched some movies that played on the theater like 'The Avengers' and 'The Hunger Game". There was difference between watching movies in my room and in theater. When I watched movies in my room, I could  re-watch to capture important scenes, which made me enable to think more about the movies. However when I watched in theater, it was hard to catch all the scenes. It was harder for me because I watched both movies in Chunky's but whole movies required some listening skills. It was hard to catch all the actor's lines at first but it got much better at  the end. After watching movies, I wrote down my basic opinions on the movies and add summaries and my level 3 thinking about the director's purposes or themes. Reviews were about four to five paragraphs. I didn't try to write formally because I didn't want my readers to feel too heavy on their readings. Writing reviews definitely improved my writing skills and organizing skills. I involved my speaking skill during my presentation and discussion with my friends when I recommend movies to them. I needed thinking skills while watching movies and writing reviews.Overall, I think this project really helped me in a lot of ways. It helped me to understand what good movies are and improved my six English skills.