A few weeks ago I went to the Writing Center for a workshop. The Writing Center has a lot of interesting workshops, such as developing thesis statement, brainstorming and writing cover letters. For that week and day, the workshop was about analyzing texts. This was perfect for me since I felt like the readings I’ve been doing for every class were too ineffective and time-consuming and I wanted to have a strategy on how to understand and read texts more effectively. In the waiting room, I met a really nice girl that told me that this was also the first time for her attending the writing center. We were about 7 students – many were older – and the instructor was very outgoing and clear in her learning. She introduced the workshop with explaining the plan of the class, why it’s beneficial and how we can use the techniques to analyze texts for example writing English papers. We all worked from the same text “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. The process of analyzing the text would go like this: 1. Observe. 2. Finding patterns. 3. Ask questions. When reading the text, she wanted us to use symbols and take notes. The teacher then guided us through the text and also made room for us to discuss our thoughts. What this workshop learned me the most was to understand the feeling of which the writer tries to convey and see the writer as someone that is trying to manipulate me. Furthermore, I learned to notice patterns, contrasts and to analyze the use of words (mostly adjectives), which I found very useful for the History primary source readings. At the end of the class, we had the chance to analyze any reading we had brought with us to work on. It was a very lucrative workshop and I will definitely attend more of those workshops in the future.
