ANSWER QUESTION PROPERLY

READING AND RESPONSE GUIDELINES When a reading is assigned and discussions/questions are to be answered, the following information will assist the student in both reading and responding to the reading and it’s questions READING -Read the assigned piece twice. The first reading should be simply for enjoyment. Assume this is not an assigned reading, but one you have been meaning to read…The second time around is when annotation (note-taking, highlighting, writing in the margins, etc…should occur.) -Reading the questions beforehand will take away the enjoyment of the piece. This may expedite finding the answers to the assigned questions, but these answers may lack personal insight-which is most important in discussions. RESPONDING -Create a two-part response at the minimum. First, share PERSONAL THOUGHTS about the question(s) asked. Second, add TEXTUAL EVIDENCE to support these thoughts. (These may be direct quotes, references to sections, page numbers, etc…) Keep in mind that when using direct quotes, “quotation marks” need to be used with the line and/or page number after each quote. Example 1: On page 262, the author states, “She was an unruly girl that didn’t know any better.” Example 2: “She was an unruly girl that didn’t know any better.” (p.262) Example 3: When quoting poetry, line and page number are both used. “The road followed was an uneasy one, as the gulls passed beyond.” (p.262, lines 27-28) FORMAT FOR THE RESPONSE Once these two aspects are complete, put them together in a strong, cohesive “essay- styled” response, keeping the assigned questions separate and numbered. Do not simply submit a paper with “personal thoughts” in one section and “textual evidence” in another. They should be interwoven within the response as one. There is no word limit to these responses. They are graded on quality, not quantity. *Keep in mind that there rarely are right or wrong answers in these responses. What is most important are the personal thoughts and what the reader thinks about the piece.*

Reading and Responding Assignment Student Example EB White “Once More to the Lake” Question # 2: White speaks of the lake as a “Holy Spot.” What is holy about it? White associates the lake with fond memories of his childhood. He remembers the many years he spent there as a child during the last month of summer. This yearly family getaway reminds him of his father; somehow he still feels connected to him through this location and through these memories. The lake is described as remote and peaceful and undisturbed by the outside world. He gives examples of when the lines are blurred between him and his son, with memories of him and his father. The sentimental ties he has with the lake and the feeling of time standing still, to him that makes it holy. There are a few examples he uses to point out that time has not changed the lake. “It was the arrival of the fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been that the years were a mirage and there had been no years.” (p. 80) “This seemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back to and find that it had not stirred this constant, trustworthy body of water.” (p 81) He speaks of this “enchanted” place as if in a time warp, where he sometimes finds himself doing as his dad did, and sometimes he finds himself identifying with his son. As a parent, you go through these times when you see yourself in the smallest thing your kids do, and sometimes you find you sound exactly like your parents did to you. It is almost like history is repeating itself, and you do feel the blurring between what was and how things are now. Some thoughts…from Edith Wharton's "The Vice of Reading" (1903): "What is reading…but an interchange of thought between writer and reader? If the book enters the reader's mind just as it left the writer's without any of the additions and modifications inevitably produced by contact with a new body of thought-it has been read to no purpose… The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity-their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought…the greatest books ever written are worth to each reader only what he can get out of them.” !