Proposal.

● Opportunity for conversation ○ Opportunity in the text: How to recognize… a specific place in the text

(word/phrase/line) that we can do something with ■ Places we can argue ■ Arguments that are happening ■ Quotations

○ Conversation ■ The discussion between the author and the audience ■ Listening and responding ■ Between you and the author ■ Between the author and their audience ■ Between you and your audience

● Audiences: Who are they? ○ Topic, language, style, tone ○ Culturally neutral pre-writing questions

○ Fascinate ■ Amazing/astonishing ■ Interesting

● Explain what fascinated you and why ● Learn more about the topic, and then tell us what you learned or

what position you now hold now that you have more knowledge ● How might other people view this thing? How do we make it

fascinating to them? ○ Shock

■ Surprise! ■ Either good or bad, but either way strong. ■ Amazed, or offended, or disgusted, devastated

● Try to respond- talk about the emotions you felt while processing this shock

● Why did it shock you? ● Compare it to normal behavior/opinions/feelings ● Look back and see if it’s true or not ● Look at your own opinions and values-- do you need to rethink

them? What can you learn from this? ○ Perplex

■ Confusing or difficult to understand ● Restate and clarify the thing you found confusing ● Examples to clarify-- stay focused on the text though ● Don’t skip it. Be aggressively curious. ● Ask questions!!

○ Gap ■ Space between things

■ A gap in understanding between what the author means and the audience gets from their writing

● Fill the gap with explanation ■ Missing information ■ Cultural ideals/values/experiences/religion

● Learn more so that you do understand ● Translate so that your reader can understand because you are

familiar with both cultures ● Don’t ignore it! ● Try to avoid the same misunderstandings in your own writing ● Identify your preconceptions/prejudgments ● Try to be open to new ideas ● Be respectful

○ Tension ■ Stressed, emotional, overworked, tight. ■ Fears, events, overly sensitive to criticism or other points of view ■ The tension that comes from disruption of your world view ■ Offensive (not tolerant), disrespectful ■ Too honest or direct for the culture

● Try to relax the ideas/writer/points of view and allow for others ● Try to smooth the situation ● Help foster respect for other ideas ● Try to help people understand each other ● Read with an open mind until the end (read generously)

○ Contradiction ■ When someone says two opposite things that disagree with each other

● Maybe it’s intentional, and it’s up to you to figure out what the author is trying to do and explain it.

● Maybe the author is trying to highlight this contradiction to make people deal with it.

● Maybe they’re doing it accidentally: you correct them, or call them out on it.

○ Ambiguity ■ Unclear ■ Undecided

● Try to figure it out and make it clear ● Research a bit ● Try to figure out why the author is being ambiguous and what

they’re trying to teach us. ○ Difficulty

■ Do some research, figure it out!

■ Look at the difficulty- is it because the author can’t write, or is it because they’re talking about something for which there is no established language?