A Critical Analysis of My Critical Analyzing Strategies
Throughout my life as I progressed through the various levels of English I have never been able to shed a recurring problem. That problem being, my ability to read literary material and isolate fundamental key points of the piece to create a written argument. This issue persisted until grade twelve when my English teacher Mrs. Quinn readily addressed the issue. During this year of school, Mrs. Quinn taught me methods of literary analysis which allowed me to dissect the text in an efficient and academic manner. Looking back on these techniques they mirror that of Rhetorical strategies highlighted by Christina Haas and Linda Flower in their article “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the …show more content…
English has never and continues to be my worst academic subject. With this class acting as one of the dominant scores for my entrance to university to say the least I was overwhelmed. And to my dismay my English teacher Mrs. Quinn had a reputation of being the hardest marker of the entire English faculty at my high school. During our first-class Mrs. Quinn assigned a critical analysis paper, where she had us read a random source and dissect meaning from it quite similar to what Haas and Flower did in their study. To cut to the chase when I received my paper back there was not a single mark of a red pen on the sheet, instead in bold red sharpie in all capital letter “SEE ME AT LUNCH” was scribbled on the back. From what Mrs. Quinn saw of my first essay, it was evident that there were major flaws in my rhetoric reading of the script we were supposed to analyze for the essay. What she brought to my attention, was in fact the same issue that Haas and Flower found with inexperienced readers; which is the inability to bridge the gap between “mov[ing] beyond content and convention and construct representation of text” (Hass & Flower 415) and reading with a rhetoric mindset. At the time none of what she was saying was making any sense; all I heard were merely different ways of reading. She explained to me that interpreting the text is not only your ability to summarize or paraphrase it but to think critically and go beyond the simplicity of analysis. At the time, I could not understand how reading differently could possibly change my understanding into a “multifaceted, interwoven representation of knowledge” (Haas & Flower 413) about the selected reading. It was evident that I lacked nearly every tool for rhetorical analysis of literature. From this point on I Mrs. Quinn and myself met every Wednesday at lunch and she would introduce new rhetorical strategies to me. Although I did
Throughout my life as I progressed through the various levels of English I have never been able to shed a recurring problem. That problem being, my ability to read literary material and isolate fundamental key points of the piece to create a written argument. This issue persisted until grade twelve when my English teacher Mrs. Quinn readily addressed the issue. During this year of school, Mrs. Quinn taught me methods of literary analysis which allowed me to dissect the text in an efficient and academic manner. Looking back on these techniques they mirror that of Rhetorical strategies highlighted by Christina Haas and Linda Flower in their article “Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the …show more content…
English has never and continues to be my worst academic subject. With this class acting as one of the dominant scores for my entrance to university to say the least I was overwhelmed. And to my dismay my English teacher Mrs. Quinn had a reputation of being the hardest marker of the entire English faculty at my high school. During our first-class Mrs. Quinn assigned a critical analysis paper, where she had us read a random source and dissect meaning from it quite similar to what Haas and Flower did in their study. To cut to the chase when I received my paper back there was not a single mark of a red pen on the sheet, instead in bold red sharpie in all capital letter “SEE ME AT LUNCH” was scribbled on the back. From what Mrs. Quinn saw of my first essay, it was evident that there were major flaws in my rhetoric reading of the script we were supposed to analyze for the essay. What she brought to my attention, was in fact the same issue that Haas and Flower found with inexperienced readers; which is the inability to bridge the gap between “mov[ing] beyond content and convention and construct representation of text” (Hass & Flower 415) and reading with a rhetoric mindset. At the time none of what she was saying was making any sense; all I heard were merely different ways of reading. She explained to me that interpreting the text is not only your ability to summarize or paraphrase it but to think critically and go beyond the simplicity of analysis. At the time, I could not understand how reading differently could possibly change my understanding into a “multifaceted, interwoven representation of knowledge” (Haas & Flower 413) about the selected reading. It was evident that I lacked nearly every tool for rhetorical analysis of literature. From this point on I Mrs. Quinn and myself met every Wednesday at lunch and she would introduce new rhetorical strategies to me. Although I did