Since last Friday everyone should have chosen one of the general literary histories, spent a few hours with it, and posted a report on their experience with it. I've printed those reports out (a couple of copies of each) and we're going to spend the first part of our time this morning reading each others' reports and responding to them.

By "responding" it should be pretty clear that I don't mean the usual helpful suggestions about organization and punctuation and spelling; what I have in mind are commments and questions that actually expect helpful responses from the writer. Not evaluations -- no "well done," or "I enjoyed reading this" or "short, concise and to the point" comments. What you want are responses expressing inquisitiveness -- and which assume that the writer can -- will, in fact -- go back to her source as she responds.

So you might want questions that ask for more -- "I'm interested in X; can you say some more about it?") or doubt ("you say X, but what I've read suggests otherwise; what do you think?") or engagement ("can we find, does your source say, more about X") or support ("I had the same question; I wonder what we can do to find out").

I've attached a couple of blank sheets to each report, and what you should do is read the report (marking in the margins or  between the lines if it'll help you) but focus on engaging in a written dialogue with the writer. When everybody's had a chance to read everyone else's, we'll get the commented versions back to their authors and we'll do a "round" in which everybody can say whatever they think important about the ideas and information they've encountered.

Go to the Forum where you posted your report, and read the other five reports. Post a response (as above) by clicking "Reply" under the reading window.

For Friday morning

Go back to your literary history and revise and expand your report in light of the questions and comments, taking into account what you learned both by reading other people's reports and by thinking about the comments on your own. As you revise it, don't just list questions and repond to them; try to revise the report in such a way that the questions or issues that seem important or worth responding to simply wouldn't be asked by someone who read the new version.

Do this by opening your online posting on the "First Research Reports" forum, and then clicking "Edit." (Tip: if you simply copy the text into your usual word processor, do the revisions there, and then, when you're done, delete the text in the existing window and paste in the new one. This avoids the possibility that Moodle will help you lose your work -- it does that, occasionally.)

Your revised report should be very different -- longer and more detailed -- than your original. Save it by Thursday night before 8:00 Friday morning; we'll move further into the period by means of these expanded reports in class Friday.

We'll do that by allowing between 8:00 and 10:00 for people to read the revised reports on line. This time, as you read be thinking about questions or issues we need to explore next. You don't need to be in EC 124 till 10:00 Friday morning -- but be there then, please.