Reading & Responding to Prose
Base XP: 45
Learning Target(s):
Respond to text in personal, creative, and critical ways.
Recognize and appreciate the role of story and narrative in expressing First Peoples perspectives, values, beliefs, and points of view.
Think critically, creatively, and reflectively to analyze ideas within, between, and beyond texts.
Prose is a form or technique of language that exhibits a natural flow of speech and grammatical structure. It is the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse. Novels, textbooks and newspaper articles are all examples of prose. When studying any kind of prose, ask yourself questions about the narrative to help improve your understanding. Incorporating the Short Story Question List that follows with your active reading skills is a good place to start.
Plot
What is the narrative hook that the author uses at the beginning to interest the reader in the story?
What happens at the literal level?
What is the central conflict? Is it an internal or external conflict?
Why does the conflict occur?
How does the end of the story relate to the beginning?
What larger meaning is suggested by the way the conflict is resolved?
What does the larger meaning imply for you and me and humankind everywhere?
Characters
Who are the central characters?
Why does each character act as she or he does?
Do any of the characters change as a result of their experiences? If so, how? If not, why not?
Setting
What is the setting (location and time)?
Does the setting contribute to the conflict, tone, or theme If so, how?
Point of View
What is the point of view (omniscient, limited omniscient, first person, objective)?
How does the point of view affect the reader's understanding of the events or theme?
What is the author's tone, or the attitude toward the subject manner?
How does the tone affect the reader's understanding of, and attitude towards, the events or theme?
Style
How would you describe the author's voice?
Is the diction consistent?
If the diction varies, what is the effect?
Does the author use any particular literary techniques or devices? If so, what are they?
How do the literary techniques or devices used affect the reader's understanding of, and reaction to, the story?
Symbols
Does the story, including the title, make use of symbols? If so, what are they?
Influences
Are there any apparent personal, literary, historical, or cultural influences in the story? If so, what are they?
How do these influences affect the reader's understanding of, and reaction to, the story?
Save a copy of the Short Story Questions List for reference. You will refer to this document as you read the various short stories in this course. Asking yourself questions about these key elements will help you understand the story further - from a literary perspective. If you are not sure about what is meant by some of the terms in these questions, they will be defined in more detail in subsequent quests.
In this course I'm going to ask you to be a Critical Reader. A critical reader...
is curious
asks relevant questions
weighs facts against opinions
examines his or her own beliefs and assumptions
listens to others
rejects information that is incorrect or irrelevant
suspends judgment until all facts have been gathered and considered
looks for evidence to support the author's assumptions and beliefs
In order to develop your writing and do well in your assignments, you must consider the three main purposes for writing about literature:
to report
to interpret
to respond
In a report, you focus on supplying facts only. Much of the writing done in elementary Language Arts is of this type. In an interpretation, you express your reactions to, and opinions of a piece of literature based on a knowledgeable and detailed analysis of it. In a response, you go beyond "I like it," or "It's boring," and give a thoughtful reaction to a piece of literature and the intended question. In this section you will focus on responding to literature.
A personal response to literature is the reader's answer to the question: "What are my thoughts and feelings about this piece of writing and how do I connect to it and the question?" There is no need to do outside research. In this lesson you will learn about two levels of response, and develop some strategies for writing a response to literature.
For literature to grab the reader's attention and keep it, there must be something about the plot, characters, or subject with which the reader can identify. This point of interest must work on two levels.
First, the literal level must present a topic that the reader can understand immediately. In a poem, this might be a vivid image; in a story, an interesting setting or conflict; in a persuasive essay, an attitude or thesis.
As the literal level pulls the reader along, the second level, or thematic level emerges. The theme is the implied generalization about life that is one of the author's purposes for writing.
In effective literature, writers gradually reveal theme as a series of connections. Readers are more engaged with the piece than if they were told outright the theme. To write a focused response, a reader follows the connections to make an interpretation of the theme. In this way, the writer and the reader work together to create the meaning.
Given that a response to literature is an exploration of your thoughts or feelings about a given piece of literature, it's not so very different from talking to your friends about a movie you loved or disliked. The difference is that you are putting pen to paper, so to speak, and giving your ideas structure and support. In responding to literature, the goal is less to persuade other readers to react or respond as you did and more to share your thoughts and feelings convincingly.
Generating Ideas
So how do you do this? First, you need to read a piece of literature to which you have a strong response, either positive or negative. Then, you need to give some thought to why you have responded the way you did. There are a number of strategies you can employ to help you. Look for scenes or characters that you can relate to, thereby finding some common ground between you and the work of literature. Or, find another person who has read the same piece and simply discuss it, finding common points of interest. Dialogue is an amazing way to deepen your understanding of a work.
Another strategy is to answer some general open-ended questions about the work:
What in this poem or story surprised me?
What characters/events can I connect with?
Does this story or poem remind me of anything in my personal life or other pieces of fiction or music that I have enjoyed?
What images or lines had a strong impact on me?
This is a lot of information all at once!
Finally, check out this page in moodle to get a refresher on how to structure a response properly (i.e. paragraph writing basics).
Ok! Enough already! Is this quest nearly over???
Yep. Now it's time to transform what you've just read into another format. This is a proven way to help students remember and make sense of huge blocks of text or notes.
Use something from your Ways of Knowing & Showing, like a list, or a website, or an infographic, or a podcast or whatever.
Submit your response in OneNote when it's ready for assessment. Let me know when it's ready to assess, as well as whether you earned additional XP :)