Week One: Creative Reading, part 3

Use your initial reading of the essay to get an overview of the topic and the different paths of investigation the writer pursues.  Don't worry if you don't understand the entire essay right away; remember, you have several more re-readings scheduled to help you develop your understanding over time.

Before you begin:

• Schedule enough time to read the essay in one sitting; often you will be able to understand general relationships among the author's multiple positions only when you have reached the end of the essay.
  

• Make sure you have a pencil for marking up the text as you read; writing questions and comments in the margins will help you to develop a map of the different positions the writer investigates. Don't read with just a highlighter in your hand: underlining or highlighting passages is not the same thing as reading or thinking about those passages. By writing in the margins next to key passages, you will force yourself to put your responses to what you've read into words. That's the first step in the process of developing truly creative readings.
  

• Scan the essay and take note of its different sections and subheadings; knowing where the essay is going to end up can you focus your initial reading on the essay's key terms and ideas.
  

• Read the material that surrounds the essay (headnotes, questions for discussion, etc.); these will help you identify key concepts and ideas to focus your reading.

As you read:

• Underline or highlight any passages that you think are significant for understanding the writer's main ideas and positions.
  

• Place question marks next to any passages that are particularly confusing. Take the time to write a comment that makes it clear what your question is. "Huh?" is a much less useful comment than "How does this relate to what he said in the previous passage about genetic engineering?"
  

• Write comments next to any passages to which you have a strong reaction. Use the margins of your book as a place to begin working out your thoughts and reactions to what you've read. "Cool!" is much less useful than "Links to what Barber said about civil society."
  

• Bracket any unfamiliar words so that you can look them up later.

After you finish:

• Make a list at the front of the reading of the most significant ideas you've highlighted.
  

• Write down any initial questions you have about the essay as a whole.
  

• Use a dictionary to define any new words you've bracketed. Write the definitions next to the words in your book.
  

• Give yourself a break. Now that you've got a general sense of what the essay is about, give yourself at least a few hours before diving back into the essay so that you have time to formulate the questions and goals that will guide your second reading.  

In your second reading, you will begin to construct the implicit connections between the essay's different strands and themes. Pay attention to the different parts of the essay and imagine how and why these different parts are related.

Before you read:

• Review the notes you made after your first reading.
  

• Review the passages you underlined during your first reading. Note any key concepts that appear repeatedly; these can indicate different threads of argument.

As you read:

• Make an informal outline of the different sections of the essay. Identify where the writer switches topics, alters his or her position, or introduces new questions.

• Concentrate on passages that you had difficulty with in your first reading. Find other passages in the reading that help to clarify these passages. If you find no such passages, make note of this: you could have just found the topic you want to focus your first draft on.

After you finish:

• Summarize the different argumentative threads of the essay and speculate on how they are related to each other.

• In a brief paragraph, write down your own reaction to the ideas presented. Which ideas would you support or challenge? What ideas or perspectives can you think of that haven't been addressed?

• Re-read the questions provided at the end of the essay. Make notes on provisional answers to these questions. 

• Prepare a list of questions to ask during your class discussion. Focus your questions on passages that you find particularly interesting or difficult or on related ideas and contexts that the writer does not fully address.

• Visit the Link-O-Mat web site provided for the reading. How do the links on the web site help you understand the issues the author raises?  What other contexts or alternative positions do they present?

• If you're reading the essay in relation to another text, jot down some preliminary ways in which the essays might be connected. How does the new essay shift the context of the ideas discussed in the preceding essay? Does the new essay present an alternative set of positions?  Extend or challenge the positions offered in the prior reading?  How and why does the new essay change your understanding of the prior reading?

The first step in developing your own position in relation to these essays is through creative reading. Each time you read and reread the text, you should work to make connections between different parts of the assigned reading, between the reading and your own knowledge, and between two different readings. Don't be afraid to take these imaginative leaps-these risks will allow you to join in the project of thinking seriously about the most important issues of our time.

next>> Week Two: Responding to the Assignment Question