1984

Sunlake High School

English 2 Honors 2019 Summer Reading

The assigned text for prospective English 2 Honors students is:

• Nineteen Eighty-Four [maybe stylized as 1984] by George Orwell

Assignment: You are tasked with creating a dialectical journal as you read the text; this is expected to be complete prior to the first day of school. See the mock Q&A below for details. Assessment: You will be given an in-class, essay-based test within the first week of school. This assessment is designed to require adept comprehension of the novel as well as proficient writing skills in order to express well-conceived ideas in response to the given prompt(s).

Both your dialectical journal and performance on the in-class assessment will constitute a significant portion of your 1st Quarter grade.

What is a Dialectical Journal? A dialectical journal is another name for a double-entry journal or a reader- response journal. In it, the writer records a dialogue or conversation between the ideas in the text (the words that you are reading in the novel) and the ideas of the reader (you). This is what you must do in your journal—keep a dialogue with yourself. In your journal, have a conversation with the text and yourself. Write down your thoughts, questions, insights, and ideas while you read. Basically, you are reading the text and then responding to it with your feelings and ideas. What type of medium should I use? Your journal can be a composition/spiral-bound notebook, a three-pronged folder with loose-leaf papers inserted, or loose-leaf papers neatly stapled together. It must be in physical form, as digital creations are not permitted. How should I format this Dialectical Journal? • Make three columns on a given page. • In the FAR-LEFT COLUMN, write down parts of paragraphs, quotes, or general observations you think are interesting or important. • In the MIDDLE COLUMN, write the page number you are referring to. Your entries should cover parts from the entirety of the novel (beginning, middle, and end). • In the FAR-RIGHT COLUMN, write down your own thoughts, commentary, and/or questions about the excerpted text in the FAR-LEFT COLUMN.

Pg. 1/2

Exemplary Sample

Inadequate Sample

Are there right & wrong answers? Because these are your own, original thoughts and feelings towards the subject matter, there cannot be any right or wrong “answers”—only better or worse responses (as illustrated above). The better dialectical journals will be more introspective and descriptive. How long should it be? A well-developed dialectical journal for this novel will contain between seventy-five (75) and one hundred (100) individual journal entries over the course of the entire novel. When is it due? You do not need to bring your Dialectical Journal with you on the first day of the school year, but it will have a due date at some point within the first week.

Pg. 2/2