Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Take Out Your Pencils

This is to help you get into the habit of reading actively and paying attention to the text and your responses to it.

I. Take Out Your Pencils: How to interact with a text.

When you read, you should, in a sense, be in dialogue with the words on the page. While you read the essay assigned today, take out your pencils (or pens) and put that “dialogue” on the page. Don’t feel bad about writing in the book. You bought it, so make it your own.

Read with your pencil in hand. As you work slowly through the essay, mark things that stand out to you. Make strong, straight lines along paragraphs that seem especially important or interesting. Make wavy lines alongside paragraphs that seem confusing. Circle any specialized terms or words the writer uses--especially if she defines them or uses them again and again. And all along the margin, make notes. Note what the writer says, what strikes you as interesting, what the writer doesn’t say, what questions you have or what you just don’t get.

You don’t have to mark the text in exactly the ways above—but these are guidelines you should use as you develop your own methods of interacting with a text. Below are some specific techniques for you to try out as you read.

SAYBACK—Alongside different paragraphs, summarize in your own words just what the writer is saying--not what the writer means, but what she is SAYING.

POINTING—When you come across something that stands out to you, note in the margin WHY it stands out. Is it something you observed, does it remind you of something you’ve experienced, something else you’ve read?

ALMOST SAY-BACK—You can also make notes about what the writer almost says or tries to say—here you’ll be making an inference. Sometime you’ll be making inferences the author wants you to make, and sometimes they will be inferences the author hopes you won’t make.

QUESTIONS—Record any questions you have right there in the margin. You may find an answer later in the text. And remember, sometimes the author is being ambiguous on purpose.

II. Your Assignment: When you’ve finished reading the essay, go back through and reread the notes you made and skim over the text. Write a summary of some of the questions you asked, comments you made and points that stood out to you. Also include how this way of reading might be useful to you if you were to write a paper about this text. (Post in the wiki on the "Numbed Mind?" Summary Page and make a link to your summary from your User Page.)

Note: this activity is taken from the English Department Teaching Wiki. It is originally credited to Peggy Woods.