Literrature in English Secondary 2 BCD and Secondary 3BCD(elective)
Concerning Writing About Literature Term 1 Week 3. 2008
17 January 2008 Yeo Yam Hwee

Understand the importance of reading the given text carefully. Never mind if you do not understand what you read the first time round. Read again. If you really must, read it again. If something escapes you because it is difficult or the account is beyond your personal experience, it should not bother you to use your imagination to make an intelligent guess at what the text is trying to say to you. What you are doing each time you read is called “engaging with the text”. The very first skill any student of Literature needs to acquire and sustain (i.e. make it a lifelong habit) is an active interest and curiosity in what you read. Listen for what the writer of the text is trying to say, or more importantly, to communicate with you.

When you read, you should be asking yourselves questions like: What am I reading? What is the setting of this text? Is there anything interesting or significant? Whose story is it? What is the text talking about? Does it have a theme? How is it being told to you? What is the shape or structure of the text like? Do you think the writer (a real human being, like you and me) is angry, excited, happy, sad or feeling dejected when he is talking (writing) to you? There are so many exciting questions that you should plant in your mind. You become an investigator of your own lives and the lives of other people, chiefly the characters who come alive in the stories we are going to read together during the year.

In Literature, we learn to write in order to express our thoughts and feelings on what we read. This is a process of affirming and reaffirming our understanding. We sharpen our senses by becoming better readers, listeners and observers when we write more and more about the things, the events and the characters we read about.

In order to establish our thinking process, for a start, here are some of the beginning words you should use every time you wish to write about your thoughts and feelings:

I think that….
I can see that…
I feel that….
My concern with this text is that…
It is probably true to say that…
It is possible for us to say that…
I feel strongly about ….
I am in favour of ….
I sympathise with…
I do not think that…
I cannot understand why….
It is difficult for me to believe that….
It is shocking to read that…
It is quite beyond my experience to read that…
I realize that…
I am surprised by…
I do not know whether to…. or not.
I do not agree with…
I totally agree with..
I do not feel sorry for…
I feel very sorry for….
Based on the evidence, I can safely say that…
And the list goes on.