A Close, Personal Reading

After reading the Woolf essay Links to an external site. with genuine care:

1.1. Your first task is to select a portion of Woolf's essay that seems particularly compelling, confusing, troubling or just interesting in some way. Your selection should be 2-3 consecutive paragraphs long. Copy and paste the passage into a Word document.

1.2. You should respond to the following questions below the portion of text you have copied into your Word document (feel free to use headers for your responses):

1.2.1. What is going on in the text (establish the situation literally)?

1.2.2. How do you respond to the text emotionally? What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life? Have you thought about the same ideas? Can you cite examples where you see the personal connections?

1.2.3. How well does the text address issues that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the "Who cares?" test? Use quotations to illustrate.

1.2.4. How were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not?  Give examples of how your views may have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.

1.2.5. Critique the author’s craft. What techniques (use of language, images, structure, sentence development) do you notice that are particularly effective or need strengthening? What could have been leveraged or changed in your opinion?

Upon completion of all of the above questions, save your work. This may be appropriate for your writing portfolio or for further reflection.

Post you assignment to the discussion forum for peer feedback.