This assignment will give you an opportunity to examine the personal element in textual interpretation. If you think about your interpretations of a text, at times they may differ greatly from those of others. Why? Because what you bring to a text - your "personal context" differs from what someone else brings to a text. For example, your life experiences, your background knowledge, your beliefs and values, your previous encounters with texts, and your expectations of texts, all interact when you read in order to lead you to meaning.

For this assignment, I am specifically asking you to consider questions such as these:

In what ways does your personal experience affect your reading of a story?

 How have texts you have read this term, or experienced, made you think more critically about your own ideas, beliefs, and convictions about who you are, (or about a specific issue?).

How has some aspect of your own identity been influenced by a text you have read? Begin by thinking about your own life experiences or significant events in your life. Reflect on these experiences and think about how specific texts we have looked at in class have affected the way you look at an issue or experience.

As you work through this assignment, choose texts that make you react . Think about issues that are important to you. For example, this may include relationships, cultural/racial issues, a specific conflict in society, and so forth.

Develop a thesis that states your opinion about how your premise applies to the text in question.

Organize your paper and provide support in the form of quotes, paraphrases, and examples from your experience and the text. Explicate this support by explaining how these examples show or illustrate what you are intending to say, and show how they help to demonstrate the ideas you posit. In other words, make sure your topic is narrow and focused.

Don't tell the reader about your topic, show the reader through examples, as discussed above. Lastly, write in your own voice. You are engaging with the text and therefore this is an assignment, that in some sense, requires use of the first person