Responding To Reading
Overnight Writes, Journals, Reading-response Notebooks
For Starters
Thorough annotations are a good beginning for responding-get
used to writing in the margins of your text. Talk back to the
author when you read-ask why, agree or take exception, ask
questions, provide your own examples. Don't treat writers like
sacred cows; the less you let go by, the more you'll have to say
when it is your turn. Remember, not all writers swore to tell the
truth.
Be clear about the purpose of your response: to gauge your
reaction, to generate ideas for essays, to argue for or against or
provide examples from personal experience.
Writing Your Response
- Focus on the past or future. How would a reader of 50 or 100
years ago react to these ideas? Fifty years from now?
- How might a reader of the opposite gender respond?
- Analyze the audience. What readers did the writer have in mind
when writing? How can you tell?
- Write a letter to the author.
- Write a letter to a friend about the reading.
- Compose a dialogue between two writers. (This could be you and
the author or two authors from your readings.)
- Associate this with another piece of writing, such as "X wrote
about the same subject," etc.
- Write down all of the reasons you cannot write about this
work.
- Divide your paper into two columns. On the left side, freewrite
about the reading. After completing the freewrite, use the
right-hand column to comment on your freewriting.
- Start an argument with the author. Provide a counter
argument.
- Pick up where your reading leaves off. Carry on the discussion
to the next stage by selecting a point for expansion.
- Write an imitation. Write a paragraph in the style of the
writer. What features did you try to copy?
- Write a news lead for your reading, using the "5 Ws": who,
what, when, where, why-and how.
- Associate this reading with a specific type of music. Explore
the connection.
- Retitle the reading. How could this change the reading?
- Select a difficult concept from the reading which you think you
understand. Using your own words, explain this concept to someone
who is not in your class.
- Pick a difficult sentence from the text and recopy it in your
notebook. Explain specifically what problems this sentence presents
for the reader.