3 Levels of Questioning

Level One Questions:�Basic Gathering Information

• Stated explicitly in the text

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• Who, What, When, Where kind of questions.

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• Work on the factual level, establishing evidence of basic information

• Examples:

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• What are the names of of the protagonist & antagonist?

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• Where is the setting of this short story?
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• Who is the “I” of the poem?
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Level Two Questioning:�Getting to the So What?

• Implied in the text

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• How & Why Questions or questions about significance.

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• Works on the level of interpretation & analysis, pointing out what textual evidence suggests or means

• Examples:

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• Why is the character named Stephen and how is it symbolically significant?

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• How does the speaker of the poem generate a sense of dreaded anticipation?

Level 3 Questioning:�Applying Analysis/So What BEYOND the Text�

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• Going beyond the text to apply its themes to parallel situations in our world

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• Analytical questions .

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• Works on the level of analysis, synthesis and/or evaluation, using the text as a guide to explore larger issues.

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• How does the race between Stephen and Edward connect with our society’s attitude towards competition: in school, employment, sports, etc?

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• How does George’s and Lennie’s struggle to achieve the American Dream parallel that same struggle for many today?

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• What do parenting/guardianship roles in Of Mice & Men tell us about how parents/guardians interact with children today?

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• Are the lessons regarding misogyny and accusations of sexual assault as found in Of Mice Men applicable to our own era and the #metoo movement?
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Paraphrasing/Summary

vs.

Commentary

• Paraphrasing– important but inadequate as insight–it does little more than tell us what we already know from reading the quote, instead of telling us what the quote means or why it’s significant.

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• Your writing should have a little paraphrasing, but it should have lots of commentary & analysis.

• Commentary is analysis & inferences reaching a conclusion or concept.
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• Rather than restating what the author has written (paraphrasing), commentary explains what the text means.

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• The easiest way to comment on a passage–find a key word, phrase, or image & explain how its connotations give insight into what the passage means/what the author is saying.

Examples

Paraphrasing

• From The Chosen by Chaim Potok

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• “The hydrangea bush on our lawn glowed in the sunlight, and I stared at it. I had never really paid any attention to it before. Now it seemed suddenly luminous and alive” (Potok 93).

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• Reuven comes home and sees the bush in front of his house in a new way. He stresses that this is different from the way he saw the bush before.

Commentary (So what?)

• “The hydrangea bush on our lawn glowed in the sunlight, and I stared at it. I had never really paid any attention to it before. Now it seemed suddenly luminous and alive” (Potok 93).

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• Potok fills this passage with images of light, playing on the book’s theme of vision and insight. Returning to his home after his eye operation, Reuven’s new ability to see is reflected in a world that, despite his bandaged eye, “glowed in the sunlight,” a world so newly vibrant that it becomes “luminous,” a contrast to the darkness/blindness of the past.

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Examples

Paraphrasing

• From The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

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• “My mother didn’t treat me this way because she didn’t love me. She would say this biting back her tongue, so she wouldn’t wish for something that was no longer hers” (Tan 45).

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• Lindo Jong says that her mother did actually love her but couldn’t express that love.

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Commentary (So what?)

• “My mother didn’t treat me this way because she didn’t love me. She would say this biting back her tongue, so she wouldn’t wish for something that was no longer hers” (Tan 45).

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• Raised in a culture that discourages emotional expression, Lindo Jong learns from her mother to repress her emotions. She symbolizes her mother’s repression by noting the woman’s “biting back her tongue,” effectively censoring any expression of love.

Examples

Paraphrasing

• From The Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

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“If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.” (I.1.1-3)

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Count Orsino is miserably unhappy because Viola does not feel about him the way he feels about her.

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Commentary (So what?)

“If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.” (I.1.1-3)

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• Employing a metaphor that compares love to food, Orsino requests an “excess” of music not for pleasure but so that he may glut himself, “surfeiting” on love thus killing his “appetite” for more love.