Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [64]
Step 5: Share your reasoning about what the evidence means. As you move from observation to implication, remember that you need to explain how the data mean what you claim they mean.
Step 6: Address how the passage is representative, how it connects to broader issues in the reading. Move from your analysis of local details to consider what the work as a whole may plausibly be “saying” about this or that issue or question. It’s okay to work with the details for almost the entire time and then press yourself to an interpretive leap with the prompt, “I’m almost out of time but my big point is….”
Discussion Passage-based focused freewriting is probably the single best way to arrive at ideas about what you are reading. The more you practice it, the better you will get—the easier you will find things to say about your chosen passage. Ask yourself:
What one passage in the reading do you think most needs to be discussed—is most useful and interesting for understanding the material?”
What one passage seems puzzling, difficult to pin down, anomalous, or even just unclear—and how might this be explained?”
The best passage-based focused freewrites usually do one or more of the following:
Interpretation, which moves from restatement to what the sentence from the text means.
Implication. A useful (and logical) next step is to go after implication. If X or Y is true, then what might follow from it? (Or “So what?”)
Application. A passage that is resonant in some way for the reader might lead him or her to write about some practical way of applying the reading—for example, as a lens for understanding other material (see Chapter 5, Writing About Reading).
Assumptions. We lay out implications by moving forward (so to speak). We unearth assumptions by moving backward. If a text asks us to believe X, what else must it already believe? From what unstated assumptions, in other words, would X follow?
Queries. What questions, interpretive difficulties, and struggles are raised by the reading?
As the short take Freewriting: How and Why to Do It in Chapter 1 discusses, passage-based focused freewriting incorporates a number of the methods introduced in the opening chapters. So, for example:
it often starts with observations discovered by doing Notice and Focus;
it grows out of doing The Method, further developing the paragraph that explains why you chose one repetition, strand or binary as most important;
in analyzing the chosen passage, writers normally paraphrase key words; and
they keep the writing going by insistently asking “So what?” at the ends of paragraphs.
Notice how the writers use these tools in the examples that follow.
Passage-based Focused Freewriting: An Example
Sometimes, in-class writings are done in class in response to a prompt. The prompt for this freewrite was, “how does Obama’s inaugural address compare with his election night victory speech?” Notice how the writer chooses to find most interesting.
What was most interesting to me about Obama’s inaugural speech was his use of the collective first person—“we,” “our,” “us,” etc.—as opposed to the singular “I.” This is especially different from his victory speech, which did not make use of the singular “I” and addressed the audience as “you.” These pronoun choices are actually very conducive to the tone of each speech. Obama’s victory speech was a victory speech—it was meant to be joyful, hopeful, optimistic, and of course thankful…so every use of “you” is not accusatory by rather congratulatory and proud—e.g., “this is because of you,” “you have done this,” “this is your victory.”
On the other hand, Obama’s inaugural speech was by and large a more somber piece of writing—as the President said to George Stephanopolous, he wanted to capture that moment in history as exactly as possible. “You” here is not the American public as in the victory speech; rather, “you” is any “enemy