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Stage II. Pre-Reading Observations
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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.

Strategy 1. Make Working Copy of Text

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.

Strategy 2. Brainstorm About Title

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.

1.
Keeping in mind the information from Task 1, brainstorm about the title of the essay. What might it be about? Will it be satirical or realistic? What kind of essay might it be, and what purpose might it have? Document your observations on a word wheel.

Strategy 3. Skim Text for Main Idea

Task 1. Skim Each Segment.

2.
Working through one segment at a time, skim for the main idea. Make notes on the numbered paper you created to correspond with each segment. Document the people mentioned and the ideas presented. Write one or two sentences for each segment. Be sure to make note of the relevant lines in the text so that you can substantiate your observations.

Strategy 4. Brainstorm and Speculate (Optional)

Task 1. Compare.

3.
With your study group, compare your notes and observations from Strategy 3. Make sure everyone provides textual support to substantiate the observations.

Task 2. Elaborate.

4.
Elaborate on your own observations with the information provided by your study group.

Task 3. Brainstorm and Speculate.

5.
As a group, brainstorm about the main idea of the essay. Then look at the results from Strategy 2, Task 2, in which you brainstormed about the title. Speculate on what the essayist is striving to say to whom. Who is the target audience?







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