Dear
Carter,
I
heard you are taking Shakespeare this next semester and was a little worried.
So I decided that I could give you some tips of what I did to enjoy and
understand Shakespeare more this semester.
Probably
the most rewarding experience that I had this semester was when our professor
gave us the opportunity to pick any Shakespeare writing that we wanted and then
basically do a book club with another student over Slack, a social media app.
We picked certain times during the week where we would read the same part of
the text and just dialogue with one another, researching things that we found
interesting, and bounced ideas off one another. Let me tell you Carter, it was
a blast! I learned so much! I felt like I needed to know as much as I could
about the play we were reading (which was Julius
Caesar) so I could help my partner and give valuable comments to our
conversation. Overall, a great experience.
I
know that one of your major concerns when it comes to studying Shakespeare is
understanding it. That was one of my major concerns when I started this class
too. One thing that I did throughout the course was that I would make sure I
knew what was going to happen in the scene or act before I read it. I would
read a summary from sparknotes, the edition we were reading, or some other
source online. This way I didn’t have to worry about the content of the play
and I could just soak in the beautiful language of Shakespeare. It took a
little extra time, but totally worth it.
To
better my ability in researching Shakespeare I started by annotating my text. I
would color code my notes by literary devices, topics/themes, vocabulary words,
etc. This gave me a repertoire of things to research and use in my essays. For
example, in King Lear, I marked the
passages yellow that had anything to do with a fool, which made it very easy to
find passages about that topic when I was looking for resources in my
paper. I also cited every literary tool
that I could spot in the play. So when I recognized the repetition in the
speech of Lear was being done to enhance the crazy aspect of his character, I
used that in my paper to show that not only the content supported my thesis,
but also the literary tools Shakespeare used.
What
was cool about my class was that we were able to use social and non-scholarly
sources, which helped me have interesting dialogue and learn things that I
never would have before. Non-scholarly sources are easier to read then the
traditional published sources because they aren’t so wordy and get straight to
the point, so it made reading about Shakespeare a lot more interesting and fun.
This helped me think of ideas I never would have thought of by myself.
My
class also focused on social-oriented learning, which really helped me because
I was able to go to my peers for help and verification on my ideas without
feeling weird. When you are expected to talk with your classmates about
everything, it no longer becomes an issue to ask for help, so that was my
favorite part about my class. If I were you, I would definitely take advantage
of your classmates and try to converse with them as much as possible.
Well
Carter, I hope this helps you! Have a blast this semester!
Love,
McKay
It's cool to see that you color coded your readings so it'd be easier for you to study and research later! Good idea!
ReplyDelete