Response to Professor X: Reading in Three Keys
Reading in Three Keys in an activity to help you being to chew on a piece of text you’ve read but that perhaps you haven’t formed a theory or thesis about yet. It helps you come at a text from multiple angles and perspectives, and allows you to respond to a text with different readings of it. Here’s what you’re going to do:
A. Select a “chunk” of text (more than a sentence—usually a good sized paragraph) that poses some reading difficulty for you. It might be a chunk that you don’t “get” on the first read, a passage that leaves you with that feeling of “incompleteness,” something that seems important, but you are not sure why, or a passage that you just want to think more about. Copy it down on your paper.
B. Attempt to “come to terms” with the passage by writing what it “says.” Paraphrase the passage using your own sentences and words.
C. Write about how your passage functions rhetorically within the text and how it connects to other ideas in the essay (For example: Does it elaborate on an earlier idea? Is it being used as an example or explanation? As background? As an application of an idea? As a piece of complicating evidence? And so on).
D. Respond to the passage in three ways, writing a paragraph for each “key.”
¨ Personally: What is your emotional or gut reaction to the passage? How does the passage make you feel? Does it connect to or remind you of anything from your own experience?
¨ Intellectually: What ideas come to mind as you read this? What questions does this passage raise about the subject of the essay, yourself, human beings, life, the state of the world, etc?
¨ Rhetorically and stylistically: What do you notice about the way this passage is written: Format? Language? Sentence structure? Tone?
This response should be at least 600 words (not including the repetition of the passage).
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