English 0950 Project
Reading: Creating Meaning

Goals:

1. Practice reading as an interactive and creative process of exploration by experimenting with strategies that can improve comprehension and deepen understanding.
2. Present an interpretation of a difficult text.
3. Describe the reading process.
4. Practice writing an essay exam based on reading.

Main Assignment:

Take notes as you read three different selections. Choose the reading that interests you most and use your notes to write an in-class essay. This essay should present your understanding or interpretation of the reading.

This essay will be written in class on the date assigned. You will be able to refer to your notes as you write your essay. Before this date we will talk about effective strategies for writing essay exams. This discussion should help you prepare for this in-class writing. Your essay will be handwritten in a bluebook. Please use blue or black ink. Be sure to leave some time at the end of the period to proofread your work. You may make corrections, but do so as neatly as you can so that your paper is easy to read.

Plan for Completing the Main Assignment:

This project has three major parts:
A. Practicing reading as an interactive and creative process of exploration by experimenting with strategies that can improve comprehension and deepen understanding.
B. Presenting your interpretation of a difficult text in an in-class essay.

Practicing reading as an interactive and creative process

Step 1: Reading about reading

Read the New Century Handbook, section 2b.
View the PowerPoint presentation: "The Reading Process: Creating Meaning."

Step 2: Practicing reading--Previewing and reading

You will read three different selections. With each one, you will practice all these steps of the reading process: previewing, reading, discussing, and reviewing.

• Previewing--Begin by previewing the selection as a whole. By looking ahead, you will gain a general senese of what is to come. This sense will help you predict what to expect from the text as you read and will help you better understand what you are reading. Jot down in a notebook any first impressions and questions that occur to you during previewing. What do you know about this piece already? Do you know anything about the author(s)? What does it's form (poem, article, story, math problem, etc) lead you to expect from this reading? Does its place of publication influence your expectations? What is the purpose of your reading (study, research, information, entertainment,etc.)?
• First reading--Read the text one stanza or one paragraph or one sentence at a time. As you read each section, write a detailed description of what you see in your mind.
• Imagine you are writing a movie of your thoughts. Do not worry about whether your mental picture is right or wrong. Just be honest. Write what you actually are thinking as you read. The goal here is to study how you personally create meaning from words. The more accurate and detailed your notes are, the better will be your understanding of your reading process.
• Pace your reading according to the difficulty of the material--the more difficult the material, the more slowly you should read it. You may find that you need to take frequent breaks if the text is especially dense or contains a lot of new information. You also may find that you need to reread some passages several times in order to get the gist of piece.

Step 3: Practicing reading--Discussing

Share your notes with the other members of your writing group who have just read the same text. Exchange ideas and add new insights you gain to the notes you already have. Together with other readers, explore the inferred meanings and evaluated meanings of the text (see Handbook, sec. 2b.1).

Read the text aloud, preferably with a listener who may or may not be in this class. Discuss your reactions with your listener. Reading aloud is another way of presenting an interpretation of a text. Think about all the different ways an actor can read a line of dialogue and how each reading can give the words a different meaning. Add to your notes after this oral reading.

Step 4: Practicing reading--reviewing

What do you know about the personal experience of the writer of the text? How does biographical and/or historical information affect your understanding? Add more insights to your notes after this class discussion.

Once you have completed a thorough reading and discussion, go back to the text and review it. Have the questions you had when previewing and first reading been answered? If not, reread the relevant passages and continue discussion with your classmates and teacher. Annotate the text as you do this reviewing. Your annotation should summarize the key ideas of the text (see the Handbook, sec. 2b.3).

Step 5: Practicing reading--Selection #2

Repeat this process of previewing, reading, discussing and reviewing with the second selection.

Step 6: Practing reading--Selection #3

Repeat this process of previewing, reading, discussing and reviewing with the third selection.

Presenting your interpretation of a difficult text in an in-class essay.

Step 7: Writing about your reading--paraphrase, summary, and direct quotation

Choose one of these three readings to be the focus of your in-class essay. As preparation for this essay, we will practice the three ways that we represent sources in our own writing: paraphrase, summary and direct quotation.

• Paraphrase--select a difficult passage from the text and rephrase it in your own words (see the Handbook, sec. 11c).
• Summary--a summary briefly states the author's thesis and main supporting points (see the Handbook, sec. 11d).
• Direct quotation--Choose the most memorable sentence from your selection and incorporate this sentence as a direct quotation in your summary (see the Handbook, sec. 11b).

Step 8: Prepare for the essay exam

Read the Handbook, Chapter 23, "Essay Exams."

By now, if you have followed all of the steps in the reading process and pacticed paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting, you have also completed the first two steps recommended for preparing to write an essay exam:
1. You have kept up on your reading and notetaking
2. You have studied and reviewed your notes.

Now you should think about the exam question:

Choose the reading that interests you most and use your notes to write an in-class essay. This essay should present your understanding or interpretation of the reading.

What is this question asking you to do? Think about your PLACE in this writing situation: What is your purpose? Who is your audience? What language choices are most appropriate for this audience? What is the context? What is your thesis? What evidence or support do you want to present to support this thesis?

Create a map or outline of the main ideas you want to include in your essay.

Step 9: Write the in-class essay

This essay will be written in class on the date assigned. You will be able to refer to your notes as you write your essay.

Your essay will be handwritten in a bluebook. Please use blue or black ink. Be sure to leave some time at the end of the period to proofread your work. You may make corrections, but do so as neatly as you can so that your paper is easy to read.

Project Requirements

To receive credit for this project, you must turn in:

___ your in-class essay exam
___ your notes for all three reading selections

Readings

Selection #1: Poem

Selection #2: Math Problems

Selection #3: An Historical Document