Tips
– Dont fall into plot summary. Keep in mind that your readers are already familiar with the plot. You can give brief context for your quote, but you should spend most of your time analyzing and interpreting the text.
– Avoid making large and unprovable generalizations about the nineteenth century. Your job is not to describe a period in history but to think about an individual text. Make sure all claims are supported by evidence from the text.
– Make sure youre not simply repeating what classmates have said. You can use other posts as jumping off points but if you incorporate a classmates idea, make sure to give them credit. Most importantly, your response should deepen the conversation by adding new or contrasting ideas.
– Refer to authors by their last names (Dickinson, not Emily).
– Talk about literary texts in the present tense (e.g., In the second paragraph of The American Scholar (1837), Emerson emphasizes the importance of ).
– Its okay to use first person (I, me) in these discussion posts, but use it sparingly. For instance, you could say something like this: When I first read An Indians Looking-Glass for the White Man, I assumed _____. But when I looked more closely at ____, I realized that _____.
