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Examples that support a main point Unfamiliar words Questions you have about a point or passage Your response to a specific point or passage

Remember that there are no hard-and-fast rules for which elements you should annotate. Choose a method of annotation that works best for you and that will make sense when you go back to recollect your thoughts and responses to the essay. When annotating a text, don’t be timid. Mark up your book as much as you like, or jot down as many responses in your notebook as you think will be helpful. Don’t let annotating become burdensome. A word or phrase is usually as good as a sentence. One helpful way to focus your annotations is to ask yourself questions as you read the selection a second time.

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: Tutorial > Active Reading Strategies; LearningCurve > Active Reading

Step 5: Analyze and Evaluate the Text with Questions

As you read the essay a second time, probe for a deeper understanding of and appreciation for what the writer has done. Focus your attention by asking yourself some basic questions about its content and form, such as those in the Questions to Ask Yourself as You Read box.

Questions to Ask Yourself as You Read

1. What does the writer want to say? What is the writer’s main point or thesis?

2. Why does the writer want to make this point? What is the writer’s purpose?

3. Does the writer take a position on the subject and adequately support it?

4. What pattern or patterns of development does the writer use?

5. How does the writer’s pattern of development suit his or her subject and purpose?

6. What, if anything, is noteworthy about the writer’s use of this pattern?

7. How effective is the essay? Does the writer make his or her points clearly?

Each essay in Models for Writers is followed by study questions that are similar to the ones suggested here but are specific to the essay. These questions help you analyze both the content of the essay and the writer’s craft. As you read the essay a second time, look for

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details that will support your answers to these questions, and then answer the questions as fully as you can.

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: LearningCurve > Interpretive Reading

An Example: Annotating Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”

Notice how one of our students, guided by the seven preceding questions, recorded her responses to Lincoln’s text with marginal notes.

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Practice: Reading and Annotating Rachel Carson’s “Fable for Tomorrow”

Before you read the following essay, think about its title; the biographical, publication, and rhetorical information in the headnote; and the writing prompt. Make some marginal notes of your expectations for the essay and write out a response to the prompt. Then, as you read the essay itself for the first time, try not to stop; take it all in as if in one breath. The second time, however, pause to annotate key points in the text, using the marginal fill-in lines provided alongside each paragraph. As you read, remember the seven basic questions mentioned earlier:

1. What does Carson want to say? What is her main point, or thesis?

2. Why does she want to make this point? What is her purpose?

3. Does Carson take a position on her subject and adequately support it?

4. What pattern or patterns of development does Carson use?

5. How does Carson’s pattern of development suit her subject and purpose?

6. What, if anything, is noteworthy about Carson’s use of this pattern?

7. How effective is Carson’s essay? Does she make her points clearly?

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Once you have read and reread Carson’s essay and annotated the text, write your own answers to the seven basic questions listed on page 47. Then compare your answers with the set of answers that follows.

1. What does Carson want to say? What is her main point, or thesis? Carson wants to tell her readers a fable, a short narrative that makes an edifying or cautionary point. Carson draws the “moral” of her fable in the final paragraph. She believes that we have in our power the ability to upset the balance of nature, to turn what is an idyllic countryside into a wasteland. As she states in paragraph 8, “The people had done it [silenced the landscape] themselves.” Human beings need to take heed and understand their role in environmental stewardship.

2. Why does she want to make this point? What is her purpose? Carson’s purpose is to alert us to the clear danger of pesticides (the “white granular powder,” paragraph 7) to the environment. Even though the composite environmental disaster she describes has not occurred yet, she feels compelled to inform her readers that each of the individual

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disasters has happened somewhere in a real community. Although Carson does not make specific recommendations for what each of us can do, her message is clear: to do nothing about pesticides is to invite environmental destruction.

3. Does Carson take a position on her subject and adequately support it? Carson takes the position that Americans should be more careful in their use of pesticides. She believes that when farmers use pesticides indiscriminately, the environment suffers unintended consequences. As her fable develops, Carson shows the widespread effects of pesticides and herbicides on the landscape. Her evidence — though controversial in 1962 — ‐ adequately supports her position. Carson tells us that every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere in America.

4. What pattern or patterns of development does Carson use? Carson’s dominant pattern of development is comparison and contrast. In paragraphs 1 and 2, she describes the mythical town before the blight (“all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings”); in paragraphs 3–7, she portrays the same town after the blight (“some evil spell had settled on the community”). Carson seems less interested in making specific contrasts than in drawing a total picture of the town before and after the blight. In this way, she makes the change dramatic and powerful. Carson enhances her contrast by using vivid descriptive details that appeal to our senses to paint her pictures of the town before and after the “strange blight.” The countryside before the blight is full of life; the countryside after, barren and silent.

5. How does Carson’s pattern of development suit her subject and purpose? Carson selects comparison and contrast as her method of development because she wants to shock her readers into seeing what happens when humans use pesticides indiscriminately. By contrasting a mythical American town before the blight with the same town after the blight, Carson is able to show us the differences, not merely tell us about them. The descriptive details enhance this contrast: for example, “checkerboard of prosperous farms,” “white clouds of bloom,” “foxes barked,” “seed heads of the dried weeds,” “cattle and sheep sickened,” “they trembled violently,” “no bees droned,” and “browned and withered vegetation.” Perhaps the most striking detail is the “white granular powder” that “had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams” (7). The powder is the residue of the pervasive use of insecticides and herbicides in farming. Carson waits to introduce the powder for dramatic impact. Readers absorb the horror of the changing scene, wonder at its cause, and then suddenly realize it is not an unseen,

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uncontrollable force but human beings who have caused the devastation.

6. What, if anything, is noteworthy about Carson’s use of this pattern? In her final paragraph, Carson writes, “A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed.” And this is exactly what happens in her essay. By starting with a two-paragraph description of “a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings,” Carson lulls her readers into thinking that all is well. But then at the beginning of paragraph 3, she introduces the change: “a strange blight crept over the area.” By opting to describe the preblight town in its entirety first and then contrast it with the blighted town, she makes the change more dramatic and thus enhances its impact on readers.

7. How effective is Carson’s essay? Does she make her points clearly? Instead of writing a strident argument against the indiscriminate use of pesticides, Carson chooses to engage her readers in a fable with an educational message. In reading her story of this American town, we witness what happens when farmers blanket the landscape with pesticides. When we learn in the last paragraph that “this town does not actually exist,” we are given cause for hope. Even though “every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere,” we are led to believe that there is still time to act before “this imagined tragedy” becomes “a stark reality we all shall know.” When she wrote Silent Spring in 1962, Carson was considered an outspoken alarmist, and now almost daily we read reports of water pollution, oil spills, hazardous waste removal, toxic waste dumps, and climate change. Her warning is as appropriate today as it was when she first wrote it.