Dialectical Journal Stems
Here are some stems to begin your interactions with the text. Remember, these are just the
beginnings of your responses. Each complete response should be more than one sentence in
length. In fact, a good rule of thumb is 3-4 sentences of response for each quote, though more is
better at this point. Also, this is just a sampling of stems; there are many ways to interact with
your text.
Potential idea starters:
I wonder if…
This reminds me of….
This makes me think of…
I disagree because…
How could…
It seems important that…
I don’t understand how…
I predict that…
What if…
This seems the same as…
I understand but…
This can apply to…
Compared to…
I can’t decide if…
If I had to choose…
I believe that…
Does this really mean…
If the situation was…
Suppose that…
Why in the world…
Why would the author…
The language in this part…