GUIDELINES FOR RESPONDING TO BLOG POSTS
By midnight on Wednesday of each week, respond to 3 of your fellow classmates' blog entries by posting comments to the entries. This is not a place for evaluative responses (“I liked,” “I didn’t like”) or editorial suggestions (“cut the second paragraph”). We will be posting rough and often fragmentary, work and exploring our own reactions to the reading at hand. With that in mind, please respond in one or more of the following ways:
1) State what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, and/or striking in the piece (i.e. “the image of the little girl playing with the cigarette butts stuck with me all week.”)
2) Respond in analytic mode. Name an element or elements and describe its/their function.
For example: “ I noticed that the stanzas you posted had an aba bab cbc rhyme scheme, while the poem you were responding to did not use end rhyme at all. It’s interesting how both poems have a feeling of extension and forward momentum even though the two forms are different.”
3) Ask at least two neutral questions about the work, without voicing opinion. “I wondered why you made the mother so unlikeable” is an opinion disguised as a question. Instead you might ask: “what is the mother’s role in this piece?” or “how to do you hope audiences will react to the mother?”
4) Suggest an exercise for further development. This could be as simple as suggesting a way to explore a secondary character (i.e. “make a list of everything John’s sister has in her purse”), or as complicated as suggesting a way to re-envision the whole piece (i.e. “You’ve written a scene in which Anne loves her parents and wishes she had known them better before they died. Now try writing the scene so that Anne hates her parents and cannot forgive them for dying when she was so young.”)
Showing posts with label Blog Guidelines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Guidelines. Show all posts
Friday, September 4, 2009
Posting Guidelines
GUIDELINES FOR POSTING READING RESPONSES TO THE BLOG
By midnight on Wednesday of each week, post a blog entry responding to one of the readings for the week. You are responsible for everything assigned for the week, but you will only respond to one of the readings on the blog. Posts should be between 100 and 300 words, and they may be creative or analytical. Always specify the reading you are responding to.
Here are some ways of responding to the text in either creative or analytical mode:
Appearance
Comment on the visual aspects of the piece or write a creative response that emulates the visual form. Notice how a text looks on the page, how it is structured, what strikes you about the way it looks, and how the visual aspects complement the content (or don’t).
Imitation
Write a creative piece that imitates the text you are responding to. Pay special attention to stylistic or structural elements that will work to create a text with a similar sound or feel.
Parody
Write a creative response that pokes fun at the original text. Look out for elements of the work that can be exaggerated for critical or comic effect.
Translation
Translate the work from English to English. This could mean changing the diction from “high” diction to “low” diction, or to the language of the street, or into a regional dialect. Or you could go through the text and replace each noun with the one that follows it in the dictionary. Or you could try to re-state the piece in one paragraph, or turn a poem into a story or a story into a poem. The possibilities are endless!
Conversation
Write an analytical response that enters into a dialogue with the reading. What questions do you have? What does the piece remind you of? What themes or ideas might you want to explore further? What rings true or doesn’t? You could also write a creative piece that poses or answers questions related to the text.
Inspiration
Explore the themes, phrases, details of craft, characters and ideas that strike you, stir you up, make you want to sit down and write. Respond with a creative or analytic piece.
Instruction
Write a critical response that investigates the mechanics of the text. How does the author handle time, space, sound, rhythm, silence, texture, color, movement, shape, weight? What can be learned from the author’s methods? What could the author have done better?
Introduction
Did you encounter vocabulary, concepts, or theories you aren’t familiar with? What writers does the author refer to again and again that you would like to explore? Note these in a brief analytic response.
By midnight on Wednesday of each week, post a blog entry responding to one of the readings for the week. You are responsible for everything assigned for the week, but you will only respond to one of the readings on the blog. Posts should be between 100 and 300 words, and they may be creative or analytical. Always specify the reading you are responding to.
Here are some ways of responding to the text in either creative or analytical mode:
Appearance
Comment on the visual aspects of the piece or write a creative response that emulates the visual form. Notice how a text looks on the page, how it is structured, what strikes you about the way it looks, and how the visual aspects complement the content (or don’t).
Imitation
Write a creative piece that imitates the text you are responding to. Pay special attention to stylistic or structural elements that will work to create a text with a similar sound or feel.
Parody
Write a creative response that pokes fun at the original text. Look out for elements of the work that can be exaggerated for critical or comic effect.
Translation
Translate the work from English to English. This could mean changing the diction from “high” diction to “low” diction, or to the language of the street, or into a regional dialect. Or you could go through the text and replace each noun with the one that follows it in the dictionary. Or you could try to re-state the piece in one paragraph, or turn a poem into a story or a story into a poem. The possibilities are endless!
Conversation
Write an analytical response that enters into a dialogue with the reading. What questions do you have? What does the piece remind you of? What themes or ideas might you want to explore further? What rings true or doesn’t? You could also write a creative piece that poses or answers questions related to the text.
Inspiration
Explore the themes, phrases, details of craft, characters and ideas that strike you, stir you up, make you want to sit down and write. Respond with a creative or analytic piece.
Instruction
Write a critical response that investigates the mechanics of the text. How does the author handle time, space, sound, rhythm, silence, texture, color, movement, shape, weight? What can be learned from the author’s methods? What could the author have done better?
Introduction
Did you encounter vocabulary, concepts, or theories you aren’t familiar with? What writers does the author refer to again and again that you would like to explore? Note these in a brief analytic response.
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