Writing a Journal Response to a Book
Summarize the reading. The first half of any journal response should involve a concise summary and analysis of the book and any main points the author seems to make. The summary section of your journal should be thorough enough that you could read through your journal response and be able to write a short paper on the book. Address what the main thesis is for the reading. What is the reading about, and why did the author write the text? Acknowledge any conclusions or commentary/arguments the author arrives at. If the book is about something, like the social and political happenings of the author's time, what does the author ultimately think and how do you know this? Incorporate one or two important quotes that are representative of the rest of the text.
Respond to the reading with your own commentary. The second half of a journal response should be your commentary on the text. This part of the journal is your subjective opinion of the book and any arguments or conclusions you believe are present in the text. While the summary focuses on the "what" of the reading, your commentary should focus on the "why." Don't be afraid to make connections between the book and your own life; if there is a theme or character that speaks to you, write about why. Address and evaluate the author's arguments and conclusions, which should have been detailed in the summary part of your journal. Think of the commentary as either supporting or rejecting (what you consider) the author's main points. Justify your opinions in the commentary. Agreeing or disagreeing is only the first step; for a thorough response, you'll need to analyze your own opinions and arrive at a reason why you had that reaction.
Develop your ideas over time. The goal of a reading response journal is to give yourself a semi-private space to reflect on the text and develop your thoughts and opinions. You don't need to have it all figured out right from the start, but your journal should help you figure it out along the way. Allow yourself to explore a topic covered in the summary. Think about why you believe the author addressed certain subjects, as well as what you think about those subjects and the author's depiction. Analyze your opinions. Don't just write that you liked or disliked something, or that you agreed or disagreed with it - dig deeper and figure out why. Ask yourself: How far can I run with a given idea, and how can I make sense of it? Think of your journal as a place to make sense of both the academic and personal experience of reading a given book. As your journal progresses over the course of the semester or school year, your responses should become longer and more complex. You should be able to chart the development of your thoughts within each individual response and across the journal as a whole.
Organize your response journal. At the very least, your journal entries should be dated. You may also want to use headings and titles so that you can easily identify a given response to a particular text. Remember, the point of a response journal is to be able to track your own progress with that book and to better understand your experience of reading it. Consider using clear and descriptive headings in your journal. It will help you more easily find your thoughts and insights as you read through your journal at a later date. It's okay if the actual journal entries wander a bit while exploring the subject - in fact, this can be very helpful. The goal is to organize your journal as a whole so that you can make sense of your entries and track your progress.
Engaging with the Text
Read the text critically. Critical analysis of a text may require more than one reading. Try to absorb the general ideas during the first reading, then come back to the particular ideas and concepts while you re-read (if you have time to do a second reading). At the very least, reading critically should require you to think about what you're reading and engage with the text every step of the way. Try to get a general understanding of what the text is about before you read it. You can do this by reading a summary, skimming the chapter(s), or browsing a reader's companion to a given text. Contextualize the text in terms of its historical, biographical, and cultural significance. Ask questions about the text. Don't just passively read the book; analyze what's being said and have an "argument" in your notes when you disagree with the author. Be aware of your personal response to the text. What shaped your beliefs on that subject, and how might your beliefs be similar to or different from the author's (or a reader of his or her time)? Identify the main thesis of the text and try to trace how it develops over the course of the book.
Annotate the text. Writing notes in the margins of a text is called annotating the text. When you annotate, you jot down your initial thoughts and impressions, your reactions, and any questions that you're left with as you read through the text. Annotations don't have to be eloquent. They can be half-formed thoughts and impressions, or even exclamations. Some critical readers annotate a text to clarify things that were vague in the text. Other readers annotate to assess and evaluate the author's arguments. Try to make your annotations as diverse as possible so that your notes approach the subject matter from multiple angles.
Re-read your annotations several times. Once you've finished the reading and annotated the text, you should take some time to read your notes. Your annotations are essentially a note to yourself. Read through your notes and try to process the thoughts you laid out on the page before you attempt to write a response to the text. Try to read through your annotations within a day of writing them, and then several times over the following weeks.
Evaluate your notes, both in the text and in your journal. After critically reading the text, annotating its pages, and freewriting or making a story map/web, you'll have a lot of information about the reading to work with. Some notes will be more useful than others, and evaluating those notes can help you decide what information is vital to the summary and commentary of your journal response. Highlight or draw a star next to the 10 or so notes, comments, or passages that you identify as being somewhat significant. Underline or put a second star next to the five notes/comments/passages that you think are most significant. They can be significant to the plot, to your understanding of the plot, or to the argument you hope to support in your response.
Gathering Your Thoughts for the Journal
Consider making a story map or web. Story mapping and webbing can help you recognize patterns in the book, clarify the relationships between characters, and chart the overall plot of the story. Some critical readers may not need this step or find it helpful, while others may find that story maps/webs can be a valuable tool when it comes time to write a response. Story webs are typically organized by a central topic or question in the middle, surrounded by boxes or bubbles that link to that topic and support, deny, or comment on that topic or question. Story maps can be more like a flow chart. They track the major plot points and break down the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the book in a visual format.
Freewrite about the text. Freewriting can be helpful if you're not sure how to begin a journal entry or if you haven't figured out what you thought about the reading. It is unstructured and informal, which makes it a great opportunity to ramble on the page. Freewriting allows you to explore your thoughts until you figure out where to begin your commentary on the text. Try not to copy your freewriting word for word into your journal. Instead, pull out a few key thoughts and phrases, then try to expand on them to develop your ideas for the journal entry.
Consider prewriting your response to the text. If you're still not sure where to begin your journal response, prewriting may help. Prewriting involves listing your responses or reactions to various elements of the book. For example, you might write out "I see in chapter two that _______," or "I felt that _________." Think of prewriting as a step between freewriting and composing the actual journal response. Freewriting can be helpful to work out your summary of the reading, where prewriting may be useful for working out your commentary on the text. Try not to restrict or limit yourself while prewriting. Let yourself explore the thoughts and opinions you had as you read the text and trace those thoughts to their logical conclusions.
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