Learning to Read

When I checked out The Language of Literature from the library, I really wasn't thinking about anything too deep. It might have been the 8 hour shift I just finished, or it might have been the head splitting hangover. That's neither here nor there. Anyways, once I sat down and started scrolling through this book I realized how much material is actually in these books. I imagine being given that much material to work with and only being able to choose certain areas to focus on could be quite the challenge when making a curriculum. The decision of what to emphasize and what to skim over is a rather large one and it got me thinking about the areas I would put at the highest importance.

When trying to figure out material that I would teach I always think back to the lessons which helped me the most. That's when I came across an exercise on page 26 of the 10th grade edition about analytical reading. Something that I was taught by one of my old English teachers was that in order to write about literature you need to know how to read literature. Thinking analytically about the text is the first step in writing really good essays. This particular exercise had to do with determining themes in literature which I myself hold to be very important. Once the themes of a story are known everything else makes more sense.

Anyways, this is just one guy's opinion and it worked out alright for me. See you tomorrow.