Critical Analysis: Introduction to Seminaring

One of the goals of English 98 is to help students develop their reading skiills by simply reading more. I'm also interested in helping students learn to be more critical readers. We accomplished this by reading two novels this quarter: Touching the Void by Joe Simpson and The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner. We met in seminar groups to discuss the novels every two weeks. Seminars are different than a typical class discussion where the teacher asks a question and then one or maybe two students answer it. Instead, seminars ask students to be active readers by thinking about surprising/confusing/interesting quotes or ideas in the book and bringing observations to their seminar group. The group then discusses these quotes and ideas, thus enriching and furthering each student's thinking on the book and giving students agency in the discussion as well. Overall, I think the seminars were effective and enjoyable for us all.