Analyzing
Literature and
Annotating Text
Ben Lusk
Session Goals
 Engage
in works of literature
 Struggle with rhetorical situations
 Annotate texts
 Develop rhetorical questions
 Share/model with students
 Understand the need for interesting and
thought provoking materials
Purposes for Academic
Reading


To master a course’s key concepts and ideas
To understand and apply the discipline’s
characteristic ways of thinking






What questions does this discipline ask?
What questions have been answered?
What questions still need to be answered?
How does it acquire new information?
What is acceptable evidence?
How do you write arguments in this discipline?
Questions Rhetorical Readers
Ask
Resource 1
 Meaningful Questions
 Meaningful Journaling/Reading Logs
 Anticipation Guides
The Parlor Metaphor
Resource 2
 What is conversation? What is its purpose?
 What is a metaphor? How does it function?
 Symbolic Drama and Action
 When entering a “conversation”, what
questions must a person ask to gain historical
and future perspective?
 How do new “frames” of perspective affect
the conversation before, now, and in the
future?
Poetical Explication and
Annotation
Resource 3
 Annotation is the key to success with
poetry
 Students suffer from immediate
interpretitus
 Building a firm foundation
 Framing the structure
 Decorating the interior
Prose Explication and
Annotation
Resource 4
 Annotation is the key to success with
prose
 Students do not mark their thoughts
 Building a firm foundation
 Framing the structure
 Decorating the interior