"A child who reads will be an adult who thinks"
Keeping a Dialectical Journal
Your dialectical journal entries should confirm that you understand what you’re reading. Keeping this journal will authenticate that you are engaged with the text. There are two ways to develop your Dialectical Journal:
#1: You will first annotate text that seems significant, powerful, thought provoking or puzzling like the following examples:
#2: You might be assigned to analyze character, theme, tone or other concrete detail.
#3: Pay good attention to column three. In it, you will have to verify your understanding of what you're reading by making text-to-self connections, text-to-media connections and/or text-to-world connections. The following question stems can help you make these connections:
Text-to-self:
What does this remind me of or relate to in my life?
How is this similar to or different from my life?
How did reading this make me feel?
Text-to-text:
What does this remind me of in another media (book, movie, cartoon) I’ve read?
How is this text similar to or different from other media I’ve come across?
Have I read, watched or listened to something like this before?
Text-to-world:
What does this remind me of in the real world?
How is this text similar to or different from what has happened or is happening in the world?
How did a specific part connect to the world around me and/or globally?
#1: You will first annotate text that seems significant, powerful, thought provoking or puzzling like the following examples:
- Effective uses of literary devices (techniques and elements)
- Creative/Unusual stylistic techniques
- Passages that remind you of your own life or something you’ve seen/heard before
- Structural shifts or turns in the plot
- Passages that make you discover something you hadn’t seen/heard before
- Passages with confusing language or unfamiliar vocabulary
- Events you find surprising or confusing
- Passages that explicitly defines or illustrates something unique in a particular character or setting
- Historical or Cultural connections
#2: You might be assigned to analyze character, theme, tone or other concrete detail.
#3: Pay good attention to column three. In it, you will have to verify your understanding of what you're reading by making text-to-self connections, text-to-media connections and/or text-to-world connections. The following question stems can help you make these connections:
Text-to-self:
What does this remind me of or relate to in my life?
How is this similar to or different from my life?
How did reading this make me feel?
Text-to-text:
What does this remind me of in another media (book, movie, cartoon) I’ve read?
How is this text similar to or different from other media I’ve come across?
Have I read, watched or listened to something like this before?
Text-to-world:
What does this remind me of in the real world?
How is this text similar to or different from what has happened or is happening in the world?
How did a specific part connect to the world around me and/or globally?
Sample Dialectical Journal Entry #1
"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
LITERAL
Concrete Detail (Text Evidence) Cultural Connection: "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure." (Walker, 1)
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INFERENCES
Inferences (Your thoughts about the text evidence) My Analysis: Since the 1970s, color, skin tone and hair texture has been fuel for prejudices, even among blacks. Much like the Brown Paper Bag Test once did, these colorisms play a major role in whether you're accepted in your own community.
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THINK
Real-world Connections (Why does this matter?) Text-to-world: Today, people of color all over the world use perms, wigs, weaves, surgeries, etc., to make themselves as European-looking as possible, because societal pressures (television, radio, the Internet and personal experiences and biases) have made natural features shameful. It pains me to see black women not appreciating their natural beauty because they are made to believe long, flowing hair is all that makes them beautiful.
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Sample Dialectical Journal Entry #2
"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger
LITERAL
Concrete Detail (Text Evidence) Literary Technique: “I have to have this operation. It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.” (Salinger, 58)
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Sample Dialectical Journal Entry #3
"Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin
LITERAL
Concrete Detail (Text Evidence) Cultural Connection: “The completeness of this transformation appalled me. It was unlike anything I had imagined. I became two men, the observing one and the one who panicked, who felt negroid even into the depths of his entrails.” (Griffin, 11)
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