The Role of Close Reading

1 & 5: After continuing with our vocab work today, we looked at close reading and WHY it is a necessary component in comprehending the passage, recognizing patterns that will eventually form into strategies, and helping organize your future essay. Through the Banneker prompt, I hope, you noted the importance of close reading the prompt for its author, audience, purpose, and introductory information. Mistakes can be made by powering through these opening sentences. Following that prompt, paragraph by paragraph, close reading helps identify all of those patterns. For instance, the classes noted the opening analogy that centers the entire passage, the juxtaposition of oppression and freedom courtesy of diction and tone shifts, the ethos of outside texts influencing the audience's perspective and rationality. As a result, yes, close reading plays a significant role in the prompt writing process, which should better yield non-redundant, original analysis.

For homework, you have the Banneker prompt rangefinders, which you will be scoring 1-9 according to the content, analysis, evidence, and mechanical prowess of each essay. You are graders now, so use your powers fairly! We will go over the scores tomorrow and analyze these and then move into one of two courses, depending on circumstances.

3: After vocab today, we had our first rhetorical toolbox quiz, which means if you missed the quiz, you need to either make it up or schedule a time to do so in the next 48 hours. Due to the nature of the quiz, this cannot be made up during class time.

In addition, we ended class discussing and practicing the necessary component of close reading - which includes the prompt AND the passage. The prompt conveys so much information, including author, purpose, audience in this case, background milieu, that aids in constructing the argument and the analyst's comprehension of it. Through the prompt close read, we saw how a skim could give you the wrong audience, the wrong background of the author, or an ill-conceived analysis. Hence, always close read! To further this encouraging method of text analysis, we close read the first 2 paragraphs of the passage, finding opening examples of juxtaposition, analogy, tone and diction shifts, ethos, and probably another couple of strategies anchoring the argument.

For homework, finish the close read for the last 2 paragraphs of the passage and be ready to share those circled/underlined/random geometric shaped items of note. Tomorrow, you will be introduced to the rangefinders process and then have meetings regarding your own prompts.