Ethical Reading
& Performative Literacy
& Performative Literacy
Both overconfident and overly-fearful readers run from these confusing, paradoxical moments in a text.
(In T.O., we run toward them, suspending our need for closure and certainty.)
What are trouble spots?
Before listing ideas (or interpretation) about a text, start a column of these things that no reader could dispute (e.g., the poem uses the word "snake" 3 times).
What are facts?
To prove the overall thesis, each body paragraph should start with a mini-argument, sometimes called a “topic sentence” but a more accurate term is this.
What is a claim?
Make your sentences and paragraphs flow more smoothly for the reader using these pointing & connecting words or phrases.
What are transitions?
Nobody’s "perfect" or "hopeless." Anyone learning any skill (including writing) should recognize their strengths and work on their weaknesses using this mindset.
What is a growth mindset?
To learn other perspectives, we should not only read diverse literature but also practice this when we do.
What is close reading?
To brainstorm, you can free-associate brief terms, names, and phrases from the text, using the clustering strategy, also called this.
What is mind mapping?
At various points in your essay, if you make a controversial point that a reader might disagree with, you can consider the other side by including one or more of these.
What is a counterargument?
Helping the reader follow your thought process (by adding things like "This paper will argue..." or "I'm not saying ___, but ___...") is called this.
(Just don't overdo it.)
What is metacommentary?
According to Trimble, this type of writer is egocentric and doesn't consider the reader.
What is a novice writer?
Many of us were taught to quickly read texts for the big picture. Instead, Jane Gallop suggests we slow down, focus on minor details, and avoid these types of notions?
What are preconceived notions?
To get over the fear of a blank page, let yourself write what author Anne Lamott calls a "sh--ty first draft." Trimble suggests something similar, but he calls it this.
What is a zero draft?
A three-story thesis statement: interprets the text in a bold way; explains why this argument matters; and provides a roadmap for the paper. Thus, it offers the reader one of these valuable things.
What is a gift?
The Paramedic Method rescues key info from piled-up prepositional phrases, resuscitates active voice from passive voice, and revives strong verbs you accidentally turned into static nouns through this grammatical process.
What is nominalization?
According to They Say, I Say, when an inexperienced writer drops a quote into a paper without any setup or analysis before and after, they become this kind of reckless quoter.
(...and maybe a bad driver, too.)
What is a hit-and-run quoter?
Sheridan Blau claims we can get more out of difficult texts, if we learn to sustain this one thing and tolerate this other thing.
(Hint: first one is hard to sustain in tech-addicted times, and 2nd thing is hard for honors students to tolerate.)
What are attention and failure?
Just like writing and revising, prewriting is this type of writing process, meaning it can be repeated & revisited at any point before/during/after a draft, and it feeds back into the other two phases.
What is a recursive process?
A function outline can help you check the flow of a rough draft. The most important thing it does is help you align the body paragraphs to these implied steps in the thesis statement to prove your argument.
What are the "promises" of the thesis statement?
In MLA format, the brief in-text citations that follow quotes or research in the body of your paper must match up with this complete list of references at the end of the paper.
(Not to be confused with a "bibliography" in other formats.)
What is the Works Cited list?
When observing the acting in a film, you should analyze what the actors say and how they say it. But you should also pay attention to these cues.
What are nonverbal cues?
Sheridan Blau defines this performative literacy trait as acknowledging other views on a text and being willing to be wrong & change your mind.
What is “intellectual generosity and fallibility”?
To discover the significance of your analysis and argument, keep asking these two basic questions as you interpret a text's details and effects.
What are "Why?" and "So what?"?
In the Uneven U model for body paragraphs, a quote or concrete piece of evidence is this level in the model, and it goes in this part of the paragraph?
What is Level 1, and where is the middle?
There are several effective ways to conclude a paper. Calling back to your opening hook is the "bookend" method. Ending instead by analyzing a brief, new, striking piece of evidence that reflects the gist of your thesis is this type of conclusion.
What is the prism conclusion?
Apart from the camerawork, everything that appears on screen in a film scene — sets, costumes, lighting, placement of actors & other staging elements — is called this French term.
What is mise-en-scène?