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.

Note: Always keep your cultural/historical framework at hand. Remember that the authors of Aproximaciones selected every text for a reason, and part of your job is to determine that reason. Who is the writer of the selection and where does he/she fit into the cultural/historical framework? Where does his/her writing style fit into the literary trends of the age? What did he/she contribute?

Strategy 1. Make Working Copy of Text

Task 1. Create Working Copy. Photocopy the selection you are reading (in this case, La camisa de Margarita on pp.46-48 of the text). Do all of your work on the photocopy so that you always have a clean copy of the selection to read in the textbook.

Task 2. Segment Text. Divide the text into segments of about 20 lines, or where it seems natural, and number each segment. (Generally, between 12 to 15 segments is the most effective number.) Then, on another piece of paper, write the corresponding segment numbers. Be sure 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. Brainstorm. Is there an obvious word in the title that places you in a moment in time? Do the words engender certain images? Are there terms that evoke a cultural, historical, religious, or mythological reference? Does the title create a feeling or other response? Document all of your ideas on a word wheel such as the one below (see Appendix for a blank one).

1.			Note: The word wheel is another graphic organizer that can be used to visually represent the information generated by brainstorming. Free association activities are meant to document as many ideas as possible in one place so that you can revisit them at a later time and cull them for pertinent information. <a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=jpg::::/sites/dl/free/0072558466/96838/word_wheel1.jpg','popWin', 'width=681,height=460,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (12.0K)</a>

Strategy 3. Skim Text for Main Idea

Task 1. Skim and Document.

2.			Using your segmented working copy of the text, move from segment to segment and skim for information that might help you determine the main idea of the story. Note the names of any characters. Document all of your observations on the numbered paper you created in Strategy 1, Task 2. Pay particular attention to the glossed vocabulary words and their relevance to your comprehension of the text.

Strategy 4. Brainstorm and Speculate

Task 1. Synthesize.

3.			Examine, then synthesize the information you gathered in Strategies 2 and 3. Do you notice a pattern or theme in the topic or syntax (grammar)? Based on this synthesis, brainstorm all of the possible themes that might develop in the text. Use a new word wheel to document your ideas. Write down, in English or in Spanish, the ideas as they come into your head. Do not edit or reject any idea during this activity. When you finish brainstorming, you can transpose any English you used into Spanish.