The short Essay, An Experiment in Criticism, by C.S. Lewis brings to light many new perspectives to how people read and experience literature. Throughout the essay Lewis works to give the message that; how good a book is doesn’t depend on the quality of writing but on the reader. He begins by defining two types of readers- the “literary” and the “non-literary”- which he uses through the rest of his essay to categorize different traits for treating literature.…
The reader-response appeal to literature relies on the reader’s ability to process the information being shared rather than the author or the text itself. With the reader-response, a person reads text and then relates to automatic explanations about life that are triggered moment by moment as they continue to read. The literature uses triggers that the reader’s nervous system spontaneously responds to. This type of approach to reading allows people to imagine and be creative within them. It allows the reader to hear, feel and smell what they are reading as if it were happening right now in front of them.…
In this essay “How to Read Like a Writer” Mike Bunn, claims that college students should distinguish choices the writer made and decide whether they want to implement them in their writing; enhancing their level of writing. Bunn explains that reading like a writer is a strategy that questions, analyses and criticizes a text to make readers look at the structure, the style, the word choice in regards to several factors like: the purpose, the audience, and the genre. The author concludes that this strategy will also signal the writer’s argument. The essay ends by providing a step-by-step example to obtain structural analysis and familiarize students with this strategy.…
In "Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning" by Christina Haas and Linda Flower, the authors tells us in reading we should have strategies. The two main strategies they elaborate through out the passage are literary theory and cognitive research. Both take a huge part while reading to have a better understanding. As Haas and Flower say "'Critical reading' involves more than careful reading for content, more than identification of conventional features of discourse, such as introduction or examples, and more than simple evaluation based on agreeing or disagreeing"(170). That's why these strategies come in place, a good reader should be able to identify the topic sentence, supporting points, and conclusion. Students lack…
Agger writes that “pleasure readers would be the sloths hiding in the jungle while everyone else is out rampaging around for fresh meat” (Agger 612). We constantly like finding out new facts about random and cool things, but if we do not find what we are looking for by skimming a particular site many of us will just go on to the next site and repeat the process. In Agger’s essay, he suggests that writers eliminate some of the unneeded material in order to sustain a reader’s attention longer. He says that it is the writer’s responsibility to change their writing style and methods by using only one idea per paragraph and providing less word content than conventional writing. These techniques will enable writers to connect to their readers…
In the article written by Dwight MacDonald, “Reading and Thought,” MacDonald disagrees with Henry Luce idea of functional curiosity. Luce invented the term “ functional curiosity,” meaning “kind of searching, hungry interest in what is happening everywhere” (248). MacDonald’s opinion of functional curiosity is that it only strengthen practice in reading rather than giving valuable information. Dwight considers today’s literature as inadequate and overwhelming. MacDonald believes that all reading done in present society is “shallow thinking.” MacDonald believes by skimming through the text, we become more coarse, shallow, passive, and unoriginal. I agree with MacDonald that there is a great amount of unexceptional literature all around us, but MacDonald does not take into account the advancements in the technological world, the lifestyles of todays society and students.…
Reading a process. The first step is to learn how to read the letters that are written on the page. Next, you have to learn to understand what all of these words mean put together. Finally, you think about there meaning in coordination with all of the other words in the essay, book, article, etc. and relate them to things that you know from previous encounters and form a perspective. Throughout the course of this paper, I will use Malcolm X as an example to show how someone grows as a reader. I will also discuss the how when a writer speaks of themselves in a story they are both the teller of the story and the character.…
“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.” (Jack Kerouac). Many things can make a story interesting, the context is not always the most important. The way a writer tells the story is often what hooks the reader, by creating intriguing and eventful dialogue that attracts the reader. Bundles of information can be helpful in giving the reader insight to the characters life. However that information can only keep a reader attracted for so long as the reader desires a dramatic or traumatic event to occur.…
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” (Lee, 39). Authors have the power to show us others point of view, they can put us in their shoes. Literature teaches empathy, gives us a deeper look at things. To Kill a Mockingbird and “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” shows us things very differently than what we initially thought it would was. Things aren’t always what they seem, the truth is mostly being overshadowed by what others want it to be.…
Rex Murphy’s “To Read or Not to Read” is a literary criticism on the works “How to Read and Why” written by Harold Bloom. Murphy explains his views on the importance of reading and asks the question “Why do we read?” His response to this question, he states “Plainly, we read because while it is not necessary to life that we do, life is much easier, more accessible, wider in its potential for those who can and do read, than for those who cannot and do not”. This essentially means that although reading is not a necessity to what we do in life, it makes what we do easier. Further on in this piece, Murphy states that literature teaches and delights and that we read to learn or to find pleasure. This point is extremely correct. Two major reasons…
Freire, Paulo. “The Importance of the Act of Reading.” Academic Universe: Research and Writing at Oklahoma State University. Eds. Richard Frohock, Karen Sisk, Jessica Glover, Joshua Cross, James Burbaker, Jean Alger, Jessica Fokken, Kerry Jones, Kimberly Dyer-Fisher, and Ron Brooks. 2nd ed. Plymouth: Hayden-McNeil, 2012. 281-286. Print.…
Mike Bunn observes diverse of methods and tactics for reading in his essay “How to Read Like a Writer”. This helps the readers become a better writer by just reading over what we read with the mindset of a writer, rather than reading to gain a common understanding of context or with the goal of completing a piece for the fulfillment of a grade.…
When reading an article or publication by an author many readers will not realize the messages hidden deep within the text. An author’s purpose is what emotions and thoughts the author wants to convey to the reader by use of distinct words and technics. In the article, “The F Word”, by Firoozeh Dumas, the author uses many technics to persuade the reader to take on her beliefs and feel sympathy for the blatant racism she faced as a child. The author’s purpose is the most powerful tool an author has, and is a constant factor in their diction, rhetorical devices, as well as sentence structure.…
Recently in my English Composition class, we began learning about reading as a process. While discussing this topic, it was pointed out that when a person reads a text they bring their own life experience with them and it influences the way that the content is perceived by that person. It was also stated that, whenever a person reads, they go through three response stages in what is labeled as their reading response analysis. These three stages are: perceptions, affective response, and associative response. The perceptions are the reader’s initial impressions in response to the text; the affective response is the raw emotion that the text produces in the reader; and the associative response is where the reader determines what is behind their initial impressions to the text and why the text brought about the perceptions that it prompted. In this paper, I am going to illustrate a reading response analysis as it pertains to a text by elaborating on my personal responses regarding a particular text through the utilization of the three stages that I have just presented.…
LACK OF CREATIVITY IN CONTEMPORARY BANGLA LITERATURE AND ITS PROBABLE SOLUTIONS Presented By Name: Md. Aminul Islam ID# 1210228030 English 105 Section: 01 1 April 20, 2013 INTRODUCTION Contemporary Bangla novels are one of the most important aspects of Bangla literature. …