January 31, 2007

Repetition with Variety: Reading and Re-Reading Exercises

[Cross-posted from my current class blog.]

    Re-reading a text is an essential aspect of literary studies. You should read and re-read actively, pencil in hand, making notes, looking things up, cross-referencing, and comparing. But re-reading doesn’t just have to mean mechanical repetition. Try thinking of the reading process as a game, and adjust the “rules” by imposing artificial constraints on your re-reading. For example:

    • Time your re-reading. “I’m going to re-read the ‘Yellow Wall Paper’ in 10 minutes, start to finish.”
    • Copy out a paragraph or stanza. You’ll read the text differently in the act of copying.
    • Read the text out loud. Or read it to someone else.
    • Read it outside (assuming you habitually read inside).
    • If you habitually read alone, read the text somewhere with other people around.
    • If you habitually read in a quiet places, read in a noisy place. Or play music. If you habitually read in noisy places or with music on, trying reading where it’s quiet.
    • Read the text at a different time of day, when you don’t usually read. Early in the morning or late at night, for example.
    • Look for keywords and topic sentences as though the literary text were a textbook. Not because literature is written like a textbook, but because for all its flaws the technique might still prove illuminating.
    • Try illustrating a portion of the text. Or try rewriting it in some other genre or form (“Ode on a Grecian Urn” as haiku?)
    • Read the text backwards, stanza by stanza or paragraph by paragraph.
    • Play with the text using an online tool like TagCrowd.

    These are just examples. Can you think of others?

    Posted by mgk at January 31, 2007 08:49 PM
Comments

I spent a little more than a year as a copyeditor/proofer (at a company where a missed typo could potentially sink the company). I learned to read letter by letter and became paranoid that every word is misspelled or misused and that most of the puntuation is incorrect. It's pretty well changed how I read; I catch typos in books even by major publishers. Every once in a while I'll get really lucky and find a paragraph alignment error or a missing header.

It can be a little distracting, but that would be my recommendation -- proof a text like your job depends on it, reading character by character and/or look at the typography and page design for inconsistencies.

Posted by: Matt at January 31, 2007 11:35 PM | Link to Comment
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