English Update February 22, 2007

Annotating, summarizing and interpreting. Teach students the difference between information and interpretation in annotating. Use post-its to annotate books that can’t be written in. C Porter-O’Donnell. EJ (May 04), 85.

Literature: Why read it? “To me, fiction, poetry, writing of all kinds keep me in love with the world. It is an explanation of the world and an interrogation of it. It unravels and glues the world together.” M Nair. Wrt (Feb. 03), 23.

Quote of the Book. Students select quotes from the book they are reading. They designate one passage as “quote of the book.” Students explain why each quote is important to the novel and why the “quote of the book” summarizes the essence of the book. Write reflective paper about reading the book and selecting the quotes. Use post-its to mark places for quotes. AJ Arvidson. I+ #20 (2002), 17-20.

Literature: Why read it? Children need constant experience with literature in order to learn to understand life—how people think and feel and what makes them behave as they do. R Strickland. The Range of English. NCTE 1968, 124. :

Literature: Why read it? Who reads short stories? “...they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us.” J Cheever. [Source unknown]

Shakespeare: How would you persuade a young student that study of Shakespeare is important? Dr. RM Frye: “There is wisdom, beauty, compassion. A sense of life, a sense of values. There is a lot of compassion in Shakespeare, even for a weakness. There is in him a depth of human understanding which we can’t match—and which I think we cannot do without. We have to live with each other. H Knight, Discover, The Bulletin (Dec. 3, 78), 9.

Shakespeare: Why read him? Why is Shakespeare relevant today? Dr. RM Frye: “Well, Shakespeare is not going to help you fill out a prescription or build a bridge. There are some things that are relevant for the moment but not for the next. And there are some things that seem to be permanently relevant. Shakespeare has the second kind of relevance. Human nature has changed very little in the course of history. And there are a few people in recorded history who have understood it with remarkable depth and breadth and have written about what goes into lives which are full and worthy, and lives which were wasted…. Shakespeare...knows what lasts and what doesn’t last.” H Knight. Discover, The Bulletin (Dec. 3, 78), 6.

Shakespeare: How would you persuade a young student that Shakespeare is important? Dr. RM Frye: “Watch what happens to a man who is consumed with ambition. He doesn’t care what he has to do to get to the top. It’s all in Macbeth. You see what little is left of what he’s gotten out of ambition. And this is the point—you start off with a basically good man but he has this driving ambition that he wants it all, he’s got to have it all. He’s willing to commit murder. Today people don’t generally get to the top by murder but they can get to it by other means almost equally disastrous. Macbeth in the end is completely alone. He has no sense of his worth or anybody else’s. It is the ultimate case study of the man who didn’t care how he got to the top. It is inevitable then and it’s inevitable now. The way Stalin’s daughter Svetlanna describes her father at the end. Stalin was Macbeth. H Knight. Discover, The Bulletin (Dec. 3, 78), 9.

EJ = English Journal. Wrt = The Writer. I+ = Ideas Plus.