3. Reading is a
complex, recursive activity.
• Annotate the prompt question.
• Briefly bullet point what the prompt is
asking you to do.
• Most prompts require addressing the
questions “What”, “How”, “Why”.
4. What?
The interrogative pronoun “what”
leads us to a basic yet sometimes
formidable task: determining our
personal reaction to a written text.
5. What is my reaction to the text
I just read?
Writers want to keep our attention.
They want us to ask questions.
Sometimes writers even disguise their
own feelings on a topic to get us to
think about, perhaps for the first time,
our own predispositions.
6. (Re)Discovering our
feelings.
Rhetorical devices are word sounds or
techniques which generate in a careful
reader a particular effect.
That effect, when coupled with a
specific passage, is intended by the
careful writer, to elicit or suggest or
mimic a particular emotional response
in the reader.
7. I feel, therefore…
Noticing a reaction to a passage in
the text is the first step.
Pinpointing the cause of the reaction
is the second step.
Naming the rhetorical device
responsible is a big third step.
8. How did that happen?
Readers, alert to their own feelings
while reading a text, are assumed to
be curious enough to wonder
how, on a perfectly beautiful day, out
of nowhere, a feeling of irritation, for
example, clouds their minds.
The explanation lies with the
author’s clever manipulation of the
text. In some way a passage has
elicited, stimulated, the response of
“irritation”.
9. The quest for “how” begins.
• Line by line, examine the word order
(syntax), diction, sentence
complexity, and specific sentence
patterns.
• Listen to the passage to discover
sound variations caused by the
placement of consonants or vowels in
a line.
• Look for the repetition of words at the
beginnings or ends of lines.
• Locate humor, sarcasm, or any other
tactic in the sentences.
10. But, why?
The analysis runs its course only after
the author’s purpose is addressed.
The feelings and responses churned
up in the reader amount to mere
manipulation unless the writer had a
reason.
What did the writer want us to see
again? Think about again?
11. Concluding
Remember, emotions connect us to
our past.
The author wants us to revisit some
event in our past and decide if we
have changed at all since then.
Or, are we repeating only by
habit, by tradition, by laziness what
we have always done or thought?
