READING PROCESS JOURNALS

Introduction

With complicated novels, it is often useful for you to use a journal to record your impressions, questions, and other insights as you read. A journal can also be a helpful instrument during class discussions; if you have recorded your thoughts in your journals, you can refer to them during discussions. The reading process journal is more structured than either the dialectical journal or the reader's response journal you may have done before because it focuses your thinking more.

With a novel such as Frankenstein you should use analytical reading tools to help you make meaning of what you are reading. A Reading Process Journal can be one of these tools. By writing about and talking about literature, you'll learn that the book's "meaning" is dependent on your own experiences and point of view. As readers, we all bring to our reading different background information; we notice different details; and we focus our attention in different ways. When you become comfortable with this idea, you will be better able to discover and share your own literary insights.

Reading Process Journal Directions

1. Read through the assigned reading without making any notation. Read slowly to gain an overall understanding.

2. After glancing through the reading assignment a second time, write a journal about your reading, in which you describe your process of reading, using the following questions as a guideline. The questions are meant as a guide and do not ALL have to be answered each time. They are meant to give you a focus for your reading so that you begin to see the patterns and narrative tools the author uses.

* What were your first impressions of what you read? Write freely.

* What questions did you have about the text? What words or phrases were difficult for you to understand?

* What connections could you make to your own experience or to other literature you have read or movies that you've seen?

* What are the connections to biotechnology issues?

* How might Victor have viewed biotechology?

* What ideas, images, or details strike you?

* Are there words that are repeated?

* How would you describe the tone or mood of the reading assignment?

* How does this reading assignment relate to the whole of the work? Do you see any patterns emerging?

* What meanings are expressed in the reading?

3. In your journals begin with your first reactions and move to more complicated reactions. The journals can be very conversational in nature.