Journal Writing

I need six journal entries in word written by due dat based on the instructions attached.  I have also attached the readings that can be used for each entry.  The journal entries MUST be no less than 1 full page.  The documents have the instructions and then one the 2nd document it shows for each journal entry, which readings need to be done.

The Journal

 

The reader response journal should serve more as a tool to assist you in reading works from The Norton Anthology: American Literature than as an assignment for me to grade.  It will help you to read actively, as a participant in a conversation with the text.  You will use it to record your thoughts, feelings and ideas – your reactions to the readings.   A record of such reactions teaches you important analysis skills, but without the punitive consequences of a check for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  I will assess mechanics skills in your essays and exams, but not so much in journal entries, which again serve you, not me.

 

When I grade these I will check for two qualities:

1. Length – each entry should be at least one typed page.

2. Analysis – you must not, under any circumstances, summarize the text.  Assume I’ve read the piece.  Don’t tell me the story, poem, essay, etc. all over again.  Instead, react to it – talk back to it – in your own words.  However, you must refer to details from the text in order to convince me you’ve read. 

 

You should have one typed journal entry per week.  You may respond to any of the readings assigned for that week, but I recommend only taking on one reading at a time so as not to dilute your response.  Don’t try to respond to everything.  You learn more by focusing – by both zeroing in on and by deeply exploring a single text.

Journal 1

Norton Vol. C – Whitman – “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and for Tues. “Song of Myself”

Emily Dickinson – “Success is Counted Sweetest,” “’Faith’is a Fine Invention,” “I Taste A Liquor,” “Wild Nights,” “I Felt a Funeral,” “I Heard a Fly Buzz,” “Much Madness,” “My Life had Stood,” “A Narrow Fellow,” “Tell All the Truth.”

Journal 2

Twain’s Letters from the Earth in Vol. C his “The War Prayer”

Chopin’s “The Storm”

Journal 3

Chapters I-XX in Chopin’s The Awakening

Journal 4

Chapters XXI-XXX in Chopin’s The Awakening

Crane’s “The Open Boat” and Vol. C Sinclair’s The Jungle ch. IX

Journal 5

Robinson’s “Luke Havergal,” “Richard Cory,” “Miniver Cheevy,” and “Mr. Flood’s Party” and in Vol. D. Pound’s “In a Station,” “The River Mechant’s,” “from The Cantos: I”

Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “from Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “The Waste Land,” and “The Hollow Men”

Journal 6

Stevens’s “The Emperor or Ice Cream,” “Anecdote of the Jar,” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and “The Idea of Order at Key West”