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Your goal in Stage II is to engage your mind actively by searching the literary text for physical and visual clues that will establish the purpose for reading it and will help you predict its meaning. Using these clues and your own background knowledge, you will explore the text and speculate on what you might learn from it. Certain words and phrases will suggest a context, which may or may not be correct, and the context in turn will trigger information about similar situations you may have experienced, read about, or heard about. The results of your pre-reading observations will then provide the basis for free association exercises. Stay open to all possibilities. Here quantity of thought is the goal; correctness of thought can be determined later.
Task 1. Copy Text. Photocopy the essay from the textbook. Use this copy for all of your work so that later you can go back to the textbook and have a clean copy of the essay to read.
Task 2. Segment Text. Divide the essay into segments and bracket them. Keep the number of segments between 10 and 15.
Task 3. Number Segments. Number each segment and write those numbers on a separate sheet of paper. Remember to allow plenty of space to write about each segment; if possible, have no more than two segments per page. You will use this numbered paper to document observations and information about the corresponding segments.
Task 1. Review. Quickly review what you know about Rosario Castellanos as a person and as a writer. Also review what you have learned about the purpose and format of the essay as a literary form.
Task 2. Brainstorm.
Task 1. Skim Each Segment.
Task 1. Compare.
Task 2. Elaborate.
Task 3. Brainstorm and Speculate.