English 240: Introduction to Fiction Prairie State College Prof.

Lee-Schott Reading Response Guidelines The major objectives in Introduction to Fiction are to: understand and appreciate short and long fiction; develop students ability to read critically; learn about the principal literary elements of fiction; improve writing skills through the use of literature as subject matter.

Thus, this assignment allows you to exercise these objectives on a smaller scale before you must compose your longer essay examination responses. This assignment also gives you an opportunity to practice at writing about literature effectively. For Modules 2 through 10, you must compose reading responses for all short and long pieces of fiction. When multiple chapters from novels are assigned, you must compose a separate response for each chapter. For your responses, you must provide 250-word (one paragraph) responses to the piece of literature that you were assigned to read in this course. For your response, you can assert: what interests you or what moves you about the text; OR what message or lesson you gained from the text.

In each response, you must integrate and discuss portions of the literary texts in three or more source sandwiches. A source sandwich has four basic parts: 1. An argument/assertion sentence, in which you assert a supporting idea that links your direct quote to the topic sentence for your paragraph; 2. Introduction (smooth integration) of your quote; 3. Your chosen direct quotation (meaning that you quote the text verbatim); 4. Analysis or explanation, in which you discuss why this quote supports your assertion. However, as you integrate direct source evidence, you must also be careful to maintain your dominant voice in your responses. Your dominant voice should be present in youre the assertion you make about each piece of literature. A detailed presentation about building and using sources sandwiches is available here (http://www.screencast.com/t/dJezKeODM9), in the Syllabus submenu in the Content menu in Desire2Learn; this presentation also describes how and why you must maintain dominant voice.

Formatting Guidelines: Each response must be at least 250 words and presented in Times New Roman, size 12 point, and double-spaced for easy readability. Plagiarism on this assignment can result in a failing grade for this assignment; two or more instances of plagiarism in this course can result a failing grade in this course.

Submission Guidelines: Your reading responses must be posted in the discussion forum. In each module, you will find separate discussion forums for each response. Please post your responses in the discussion forum because these will be the content of your discussions. Reading responses will not be accepted by email. When you post responses, please post your responses in the message boxes in the discussion forum. Different students have different wordprocessing programs, so it is not useful to post your work as attachmenteven if you attach .rtf files. Students who post their responses as attachments will not receive credit for response posts.