Isolating a Passage from a Reading in “Mixed” or “Split-level” Courses - Practices and Strategies of |
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This strategy can be used in any class in which one is focused on a particular text. It could also be used with a visual text (by putting an image up on PowerPoint, for example), a musical one (by playing a piece of a larger musical composition), or a material one (by allowing students to handle and think about the use of a religious object that is used in a tradition). The intent of the strategy is to get students to engage in an act of attention, a discipline that they can transfer to their own practices, and to move all the students from a general reading towards what John Guillory calls "professional reading," reading with vigilance, within the boundaries of an academic tradition, and expecting that one’s reading will be opened to a critical audience (Guillory, 2000). This strategy also shows students that while there is no one "correct" interpretation of a text, there is a range of better and worse interpretations. It allows students to talk through a range of interpretations together before they have to venture one. Since these assignments are "low stakes" ones, they give students practice for writing a longer paper in which they will do this kind of analysis over several passages in one text or across two or more texts. |