Reading Journal Guidelines 1

Reading Journal
Purpose:
The reading journal asks that students express in writing their own personal interests and insights and build on the skills they already intuitively possess: the ability to observe, to listen, to take notes, to reflect on their notes, and to ask questions that are borne out of a sense of genuine curiosity.

Liken the reading journal to a fieldwork journal. Moving from the assumption that, for the anthropologist, wherever you are is a potential site for fieldwork, students are encouraged to use texts as fieldwork sites by keeping journal and pen handy whenever they read from their texts, copying down interesting passages, freewriting responses to particular sections, and raising questions. These notes will be invaluable when students move on to writing analytical, research, or literary interpretation essays.

Giving students space and encouragement to record their personal thoughts and reactions to the reading can also free students up to locate their own specific points of engagement with the texteven, or especially, if they initially react to the text negatively.

Your reading journal should include three main elements:

1. Impressions
Your Personal thoughts and reactions

Try not to censure your reactions to the text but to include more than "I liked (or hated)" type of statements. Be reflective; think about why you may be responding the way you are. Leave room for recording later reflections on the same topic/event/character. One way to do this is to take notes on the left hand page of notebook and reserve the right-hand page for later additions, comments, questions, and so on.

2. CSPAR
Comments and questions on characterization, point of view, setting, plot, and narrative structure, Refer to the following kinds of questions to help guide your responses:

Point of view: Who tells the story? Can you trust the narrator to tell you the truth about events, characters, and settings of the story? Why has the author chosen this point of view? What effects does it have on other elements of the story? Characterization: How are the characters portrayed? Are they flat, round, dynamic, static? Do they change? How and why do they change? What do they learn? What problems do they have? Do they have traits that contradict one another and therefore cause internal conflicts? Do they experience epiphanies? How or what? How do they relate to each other? Etc.

Reading Journal Guidelines 2

Setting: Where does the action take place? (Think not only about geographic location but also physical space: indoors, outdoors, small rooms, palatial homes, etc.) What does it look like, sound like, feel like? What relationship does place have to characterization, the plot, themes, and the narrative structure? At what period in history does the action take place? Plot: What is the main conflict? What are the minor conflicts? How are all the conflicts related? What causes the conflicts? Where does the climax occur, if there is one? Why? How is the main conflict resolved? Which conflicts go unresolved? Narrative Structure: How does the story move? What kind of narrative device is employed to move the plot? That is, are the characters on a journal through geographic space? Does the narrative move chronologically? etc. How does this structure seem to reflect or comment on others elements (i.e. characters and themes) in the text? . Record your observations and questions about the locations or the historical period depicted in this text. As you read pay attention to and take notes on what you "observe" about such things as:

gender relations race interior and exterior space (architecture, the city/countryside) the family social class and social mobility consumer culture social control, discipline and ideology In your note-taking, when jotting down short quotations and paraphrases remember to cite page numbers. You will undoubtedly use some of these later when writing essays. (Indeed, your notes can even help you to choose a topic or a research question.) Many of these questions about elements of fiction come from Griffith, Kelley. Writing Essays about Literature: A Guide and Style Sheet, 5th edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998

3. Vocabulary/Secondary Research
If you encounter words with which you are not familiar, please look them up and record what you learn here.
You may have many questions about the text (and a specific research topic that will come out of the text) that the text, as a primary source, will not answer. Thus, you may be researching primary and secondary historical materials to help deepen your understanding about the context within which the work takes place. You may compile your notes and bibliography in your reading journal throughout your reading/researching process.

Please type up your notes and email them to me by the assigned date.