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Metacogitive Reading Strategies: Part 5 Analysis! Answering the “So what?”. Let’s Review!. What’s metacognition? Thinking about your thinking “Talking with the text” in your head! Activating Schema What is “schema”? Prior knowledge
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Metacogitive Reading Strategies: Part 5Analysis!Answering the “So what?”
Let’s Review! • What’s metacognition? • Thinking about your thinking • “Talking with the text” in your head! • Activating Schema • What is “schema”? • Prior knowledge • What are the ways we can connect what we read to our schema? • Text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world
Let’s Review! • Visualization • What’s “visualization”? • Crafting sensory and emotional images (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, emotion) • Live the text! • Show, don’t tell! • Making inferences • What’s an “inference”? • Reading between the lines • What are the two necessary elements to craft an inference? • Our schema and the text!
Let’s Review! • Textual Evidence • What two pieces of information are included in an MLA citation? • Author last name and page number (Smyth 47). • What are the three uses for quotation marks? • Titles of short texts • Dialogue (characters speaking) • Borrowing words • Questioning • What are the two types of questions? • Thick and thin • What is the purpose of “thin” questions? • To clarify factual information (short, straight-forward answers) • What is the purpose of “thick” questions? • To think BEYOND the text, see the big picture, engage in discussion
Analyzing! • What is analysis? • Noticing important elements of a text: • Important details • Something that doesn’t belong, has been repeated, or is particularly powerful (“savage”) • Literary techniques • Juxtaposition, simile, metaphor, personification, imagery, allusion, etc. etc. etc. • Structural techniques • Poetry (syllables, rhyme, stanzas, meter, patterns) • Purpose of paragraphs (counterargument, conclusion, description) • Connections • To other texts (DBQ’s!) • Within a single text (seeing similarities, contrasts, patterns, etc.)
Analyzing! • AND…Answering the “So What?” • This means that in order to analyze, the reader must explain WHY the author used a specific technique. • The reader must see the greater significance of the use of the technique. • We must assume nothing is an accident!
Analysis! • How does analyzing help us understand what we read? • It helps us see the that even the smallest details of an author’s writing are meaningful and deliberate. • It helps us learn how to see the important elements of texts, see things that don’t fit, see how everything fits together. • It helps us to understand the deep meanings of complex texts.
Analysis Example • First, the reader notices something significant: Bradbury repeatedly describes Clarisse McClellan as “white” (Bradbury 5). • “White,” “Milk-White,” “Pale,” etc. • Then, the reader answers “So what?” Why does the author repeat the descriptions of “white”? Bradbury repeatedly describes Clarisse McClellan as “white” in order to paint her as pure and innocent, untarnished by the dystopian society. Because the reader is encouraged to adore this innocent girl, her mysterious disappearance proves even more upsetting.
Analysis Example • First, the reader notices something significant: Bradbury describes Clarisse’s dress saying, “Her dress was white and it whispered” (Bradbury 5). • Personification! • Then, the reader answers “So what?” Why does the author personify Clarisse’s dress? Bradbury personifies the dress as “whispering” to further add to Clarisse’s mystery, intrigue, and secrecy. Again, this allows the reader to form an even deeper attachment to this character as unique and special.
Analysis Example • First, the reader notices something significant: Sandra Cisneros does not use quotation marks when characters engage in dialogue. • “Close your eyes and they’ll go away, her father says, or You’re just imagining” (Cisneros 37). • Then, the reader answers “So what?” Why does the author deliberately misuse this writing convention? Because this book provides such a close, intimate look at Esperanza’s view of the world, omitting quotation marks helps the reader feel as if he/she is not just watching Esperanza, but is Esperanza. They are in her head and in her world so deeply, that there is almost no separation between her and the external world.
Analysis Example • First, the reader notices something significant: Esperanza uses short, fragment-like sentences and long, run-on-like sentences. • “See. That’s what I mean. Now wonder everybody gave up. Just stopped looking out when little Efren chipped his buck tooth on a parking meter and didn’t even stop Refugia from getting her head struck between two slats in the back gate and nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut, just like a falling star, and exploded down to earth without even an ‘Oh’” (Cisneros 36). • Then, the reader answers “So what?” Why does a talented author commit sentence structure errors? This makes the tone more conversational reflecting that although Esperanza is talented with language, she is still child-like and genuine. She is not yet part of the academic world with rigid rules and limits.
Let’s Practice!What do I say when I analyze? “The author uses _______________________ in order to _________________...”
Why Does it Matter? • Analyzing is the focus of literary study for the rest of high school and for the entirety of college. • Analyzing is the most challenging reading strategy! Analyzing successfully is a wonderful achievement. • Analyzing helps you truly appreciate the talent great authors have. • Analyzing helps you achieve an in-depth, sophisticated understanding of a text, which makes you… • A ROCK STAR READER!
