CCWP05: Making Sense: Perspectives On Interpretation

Incredibly important handout for Unit 2

On Monday 14th/ Tuesday 15th of February we will have a class discussion about the impact of the readings for Unit 2 on you as readers, and on the rhetorical lessons that you as writers can derive from them. Because the discussion will center on observations you will have made while working through the readings, I am distributing this handout well ahead of schedule. I strongly advise you to start preparing for the discussion as soon as you start making your way through the reading packet, not only by writing extensively in you reading diary, but by reading with these questions in mind. Please note that it will be very difficult to improvise an answer unless you have done your work properly and thoroughly beforehand, that is in the previous two weeks, especially because the discussion is scheduled for the very day on which your first draft of Essay 2 is due.

These are the questions for class discussion.

Did any parts of any of the readings for this unit make a particularly deep impression on you emotionally or intellectually (for example, by making you change your mind about some important issue, or by opening up to you an entirely new field of enquiry or mode of thought, or by extending, even temporarily, your capacity for feeling and empathy)? If the answer is yes, please select a couple of short passages that were particularly effective on you as a reader, and try to understand, and to explain to your fellow students, how they made their impact.

Did any parts of any of the readings for this unit strike you as particularly boring or uninteresting, stupid or biassed? If the answer is yes, please select a couple of short passages where these faults are, in your opinion, particularly evident, and demonstrate them to your fellow students.

Please remember to bring to class the whole reading packet for Unit 2 so as to be able to keep up with the references.

While we are at it, I might just as well draw your attention to another date in the syllabus for Unit 2. On February 2/3 two volunteers from each group will bring to class short samples of nonfiction prose that made a lasting impression on them as readers and analyze the rhetorical means by which the writer has achieved this effect. This may sound very complicated but actually amounts to little more than an exercise in concentrated reading and an effort at clear and orderly explanation of one's feelings, likes and dislikes; also, our workshops on introductions and on structure in Unit 1 should have given you some idea of how to conduct such an exercise. The important thing, in this as in most endeavours, is to begin early. If you are interested in participating (and I hope you will be, for the benefits to be drawn from such an exercise are considerable), begin now to look out in your reading for promising material. Please note that course readings for this unit are off-limits for this exercise: I am already thoroughly familiar with their rhetorical merits and shortcomings; I am selfishly expecting to learn as much as I can from your hard work, so please do your best to educate and surprise me.

One last important reminder: as you go though the readings for this unit, please be sure to mess up your photocopies properly and write extensively in your reading diary. Go back to the first handout and reread Exercise A if you're not sure how to do it. There is no way you can produce a decent piece of prose without having taken the time to reflect seriously on the texts and to try out your ideas in writing; writing does not simply feel different from thinking and talking: it is different (that's why it's so hard to do!). Writing can give you an entirely different perspective on your reading, on the issues you are serious about, and on your own ideas and opinions, alerting you to faults and incoherences, and to possibilities for improvement and development, that you could not have become aware of in any other way. Sometimes you will be able to lift out whole chunks of your reading diary and include it in your draft with few or no alterations; often it will provide you with ideas and questions to get you started, with keywords to orient your reflection, and with useful bits of evidence and analysis that point towards specific developments; and it will always offer you good practice in making your feelings and intuitions explicit so they can be shared with others and in expressing yourself in writing. Remember that behind every page of good prose you read and enjoy lies a mile-high pile of preliminary writing that the reader does not get to see but that shows up in the quality of the finished product.