Process Guide, Part Two Different Patterns for Different Needs History writers arrange supporting ideas in various patterns, mainly to help the student feel “the logic of events.” In Barzun’s words, “Logic and rationality do not mean reasonableness. Human acts often spring from mad, wild impulses; but the later observer can rationally see how ambition, revenge, greed, ignorance, hope, habit, idealism, practicality and unpracticality interact to produce the results that we know occurred. This is what is meant by the logic of events.” Such logic tells us that history is “a recognizably human product, something that shows what human beings really did and thought.” But different pieces of logic require different patterns to become clear. The following patterns are often used by historians and should help you get started: Chronological or Time Order This pattern occurs when the historian stands back from judging events and simply lets them unfold. When we want to know what happened from the beginning to the end of a historical period, we look for time order. Sometimes called chronology, this pattern allows the historian to arrange the details as a series of crucial events, decisions, or actions. Given a set of details in time order, we can also arrange these details in a timeline. Here’s timeline from the Civil War: The “Two Thirteens” and Lincoln’s Freeing of the Slaves December 20, 1860
South Carolina, fearing newly elected President Abraham Lincoln will try to end slavery, secedes (withdraws) from the United States; next February, South Carolina and other seceded Southern states form the Confederate States of America (Confederacy)
April 12, 1861
Confederates fire on Fort Sumter; Civil War starts
March 2, 1861
Original Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution passed by both Senate and House of Representatives, protecting slavery as legal; during war, amendment not sent to states for ratification that will make it official part of Constitution
August, 1861
Congress authorizes Union army to free slaves held by rebel soldiers (Confiscation Act)
August-December, 1861 Lincoln, favoring gradual emancipation, and fearing the loyal slaveholding states will secede, restrains generals and cabinet members from unilaterally freeing slaves July 17, 1862
In “Second Confiscation Act,” Lincoln proclaims all persons enslaved by rebel soldiers or by anyone helping rebels can be seized (freed) as “property of war”
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Process Guide, Part Two July, 1862
Lincoln discusses an Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet; Secretary of State Seward, noting many Union defeats, urges Lincoln not to issue it until a victory is won
September 17, 1862
The Battle of Antietam fought, a partial Union victory
September 22, 1862
Lincoln, offering compensation to slaveholders if Confederate states will rejoin Union, issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, warning that on January 1, all offers are withdrawn and all slaves in rebel states forever free; slaves in loyal states unaffected
January 1, 1863
Final Emancipation Proclamation issued, as a military order. Key phrases: “*A+ll persons held as slaves within States, and parts of States” *the “people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States”+ “are, and henceforward shall be free.” Any slaves “of suitable condition” may volunteer “into the armed forces of the United States”
April 8, 1864
Congress. realizing, like Lincoln, that the President has only limited authority to act against slavery, votes on a new 13th Amendment. Senate passes the amendment; the House fails to pass it, lacking sufficient Democratic votes. Lincoln will work for months persuading Democrats and other house members to pass it
January 31, 1865
Both houses of Congress now pass Thirteenth Amendment; acceptance made a mandatory condition for rebel Southern states to rejoin Congress after war
April, 1865
Civil War ends; Lincoln assassinated
December 6, 1865
Thirteenth Amendment ratified by 2/3 majority of states; slavery now illegal
A timeline has some advantages for the student who wants chronological order: it’s short and to the point, and it’s easy to grasp in a quick overview, or a last-minute review before an exam. But a timeline is no substitute for a well-organized telling of events; this is because it leaves no room for clarification. Only the most major details are included. Thus, a student reading my timeline of the “two” Thirteenth Amendments will not get a completely clear impression of Lincoln’s policy changes on slavery (he at first wanted freed slaves to resettle outside the United States). Nor will the student see how gradually Lincoln had to move towards freeing the slaves, so that loyal slaveholding states, such as Kentucky and Maryland, would not leave the Union in the early days of the Civil War. But a chronological paragraph can be made of many sentences. Thus it has room for clarification and development. A chronological paragraph may include transition words such as “first,” “second,” “After Lincoln’s inauguration,” “during the first half of the Civil War,” “finally,” and other such words and phrases to cling to.
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Process Guide, Part Two Definition History writers use definition when an important term, perhaps unique to the historian’s specialty (such as primary source or secondary source), must be understood. Also, important named events, concepts, or documents in history (Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War, Reconstruction, Manifest Destiny) are ideas that keep returning. These ideas have long-lasting effects and are important in many ways, so they require a definition. A definition paragraph can describe, explain, clarify, or provide examples, but the main result of reading such a paragraph is to carry away a definition fixed in your mind. A definition paragraph may have a more complicated organizational pattern. The topic sentence, or main idea, will unquestionably define a term. But the supporting details will be whatever makes the definition understandable. “The main result of reading a definition paragraph is to carry away a definition fixed in your mind. The supporting details will be whatever makes the definition understandable.”
The complication arises because we define actions, like space exploration or skydiving, in detail, in sequences of history or process. The writer who defines a term in this way describes how space exploration developed, or how to skydive. Thus we often need to understand how things work as well as what they are. Here’s a definition paragraph from Goodwin, who’s describing a cabinet session at which Lincoln will introduce a document soon to be historic. In the paragraph, we learn how the document was received by Lincoln’s cabinet, as well as what the document would do. Boldface, added here, shows the term being defined, and later, with underlining also added, shows the definition: The desultory talk [among Cabinet members] abruptly ended when Lincoln took the floor and announced he had called them together in order to read the preliminary draft of an emancipation proclamation. He understood the “differences in the Cabinet on the slavery question” and welcomed their suggestions after they heard what he had to say; but he wanted them to know that he “had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice.” Then, removing two foolscap sheets from his pocket and adjusting his glasses on his nose, he began to read what amounted to a legal brief for emancipation based on the chief executive’s powers as commander in chief. This definition paragraph, an unusual one, splits the term to be defined and its definition far apart. Also, instead of discussing the proclamation’s exact legal effect, the paragraph shows Lincoln presenting the document to his cabinet. Cause and Effect Cause and effect is a tremendously important pattern for historians. Scientists use cause and effect to explain how striking a match (cause) results in a flame (effect). In history, cause and effect isn’t as simple as in science. But for historians, the fact that cause-and-effect 14
Process Guide, Part Two relationships are more complicated just makes this pattern more fascinating. For this reason, historians enjoy arguing over what may have caused a famous event. Did slavery cause the Civil War? Or did economic differences, or states’ rights, bring about the dispute between North and South? The cause-and-effect pattern comes in several variations. This is because in real life, unlikely causes, often in combination, produce unexpected effects. First, one cause can bring about several different effects, all at the same time: E
C
E E
Second, one cause can lead to one effect, which in turn becomes a cause of another effect, and this next effect becomes the cause of still another effect. We call this a chain reaction: C CCCE (E) (E) (E)
Third, several causes, all working at the same time, can combine to create one single effect: C
C
C
E
To illustrate, let’s start with a simple cause-and-effect pattern. Goodwin, in this passage, writes about Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, analyzing why she visited wounded Civil War soldiers in Union hospitals: It was during this restorative summer [1862] that Mary formed what one newspaper termed “a daily habit of visiting the hospitals in the District [of Columbia+.” The hospitals became her refuge, allowing her a few hours of reprieve from her private grief. “But for these humane employments,” a friend who accompanied her to the hospital wards recalled her saying, “her heart would have broken when she lost her child *Willie Lincoln+.” It is clear in the recollections of Walt Whitman, who worked as a nurse in the hospital wards, that the harrowing experience made one’s “little cares and difficulties” disappear “into nothing.” After ministering each day to the hundreds of young men who had endured ghastly wounds, submitted to 15
Process Guide, Part Two amputations without anesthesia, and often died without the comfort of family or friends, Whitman wrote, “nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it used to.” The first sentence is background information: Mary developed the habit of visiting the military hospitals in Washington, D.C. The statement, plain as it is, invites the reader to ask the question, “Why did she visit so often?” The answer to the question is the topic sentence, second in the paragraph, which provides a strong reason why Mary visited: the hospitals were her refuge and sheltered her from her grief. The topic sentence also announces the details which are the real pattern of organization. These details explain, even more directly, why Mary came every day: her heart would have broken if she had not visited; the visits made her cares disappear. Also, the “harrowing experience” probably helped her understand the real suffering of the war. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension SelfAssessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member.
Comparison or Contrast Writers of history will also use patterns of comparison or contrast. Events in history can be similar, although separated by centuries or continents; for example, ancient Rome, the U.S., and Iraq have all suffered from civil war. Historians who deal with such events may use comparison to describe the similarities in detail. We think of similarities when we say, with George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” However, though historical events may be similar, they are never identical. Sometimes, the differences are more important than the similarities. In this case, the historian may organize the details in a pattern of contrasts. In history, a comparison pattern will emphasize the similarities between events, but a contrast pattern will emphasize the differences.
Let’s consider the civil wars we’ve just mentioned. A contrast pattern will emphasize the differences in these civil wars. Thus, the Roman war was a struggle between power-hungry generals, while the American war was a conflict fought largely over human rights. The Iraqi civil war is a religious dispute between opponents of the same basic faith, but with deep disagreements, disputes going far back in history.
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Process Guide, Part Two There are other uses for contrast patterns. For instance, historians note that failures of governmental policy can be blamed on poor leadership. Likewise, when a policy succeeds, strong leadership often gets the credit for its success. Thus, in history textbooks, we read about poor leaders and strong leaders, often in the same chapter. Forced to discuss the differences, historians often use contrast patterns. Even good leaders, however, can have contrasting styles. As seen in the passage quoted below, the Union, or Northern, cause in the Civil War was lucky in having two good leaders in high position, Abraham Lincoln and Edwin Stanton. Nevertheless, Lincoln and Stanton were quite different men, each man a good fit for the position he occupied. Doris Kearns Goodwin contrasts them: “No two men were ever more utterly and irreconcilably unlike,” Stanton’s private secretary, A. E. Johnson, observed. “The secretiveness which Lincoln wholly lacked, Stanton had in marked degree; the charity which Stanton could not feel, coursed from every pore in Lincoln. Lincoln was for giving a wayward subordinate seventy times seven chances to repair his errors; Stanton was for either forcing him to obey or cutting off his head without more ado. Lincoln was as calm and unruffled as the summer sea in moments of the gravest peril; Stanton would lash himself into a fury over the same condition of things. Stanton would take hardships with a groan; Lincoln would find a funny story to fit them. Stanton was all dignity and sternness, Lincoln all simplicity and good nature…yet no two men ever did or could work better in harness. They supplemented each other’s nature, and they fully recognized the fact that they were a necessity to each other.” The differences between the two men are made clear: Lincoln open, Stanton secretive; Lincoln forgiving, Stanton unforgiving; Lincoln calm, Stanton often furious, and so on. Also, Goodwin implies that these men’s oppositions of character made each well adapted to his position. A president with Stanton’s anger could not have held the remaining Union states together, could not have teamed up so many different generals in the war effort, and could not have sensed the exact right moment to help end slavery. But Lincoln was not always quick enough to take direct and ruthless action, and Stanton’s job, involved with moving exact numbers of soldiers and supplies to the right spot in time, required just the kind of hard-driving taskmaster Stanton was. In truth, the differences between the two men, revealed in the paragraph pattern, are not the complete story: both men worked well together for the same cause. In such a case, patterns of contrast and comparison can overlap.
*** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension SelfAssessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. 17
Process Guide, Part Two Space or Location Professor Jacques Barzun says that for today’s American students to understand history as past students once did, geography would have to be taught in a serious way. Historians do organize paragraphs with a sense of space, location, or geography. In the following paragraph, Goodwin uses the directional movements laid out in a Union battle plan to build the suspense as the actual battle develops: Lincoln’s uneasiness about his warring cabinet colleagues paled in comparison, however, to his disquietude about the impending movements of the Army of the Potomac. On April 13, 1863, three days after Lincoln returned from his trip [to review the troops, General Joseph] Hooker took the first step in what would become known as the Battle of Chancellorsville. He dispatched ten thousand cavalrymen under General George Stoneman to head south and insert themselves between Lee’s army and Richmond. With the Confederate supply lines to Richmond severed, Hooker intended to cross the Rappahannock, draw the enemy away from Fredericksburg, and engage him in battle. Heavy rains and impassable roads delayed the advance, but finally, during the last week of April, Hooker’s men began crossing the river. The topic sentence comes first, and announces the details, the spatial “movements” which will give Lincoln so much “disquietude.” Process A historian’s bag of usable patterns also includes process, which illustrates how something is invented, manufactured, or enacted in several steps. When historical details are organized into a process pattern, the pattern is sometimes cast in the past tense. This is the case when long-ago processes, like the operations of early steel mills, are being discussed. Often, too, a process is discussed as in a recipe or chemistry book, with a sort of “habitual” present tense. We speak in the present, showing that the steps of the process can be repeated as often as necessary, free from strict time. This way of handling process makes the pattern different from cause and effect, which has a family resemblance to process. Goodwin does not use process in the present tense very often, but she does use pasttense process in describing the school routine of young Kate Chase, a friend of Lincoln:
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Process Guide, Part Two The long years away from home must have been bleak and often difficult for the motherless child. Located at Madison Avenue and Forty-Ninth Street, Miss Haines’s School held the girls to a strict routine. They rose at 6 a.m. to study for an hour and a half before breakfast and prayers. A brisk walk outside, with no skipping permitted, preceded classes in literature, French, Latin, English grammar, science, elocution, piano, and dancing. At midafternoon, they were taken out once again for an hour-long walk. In the evenings, they attended study hall, where, “without *the teacher’s+ permission,” one student recalled, “we could hardly breathe.” Only on weekends, when they attended recitals or the theater, was the routine relaxed. The steps in the process, which make one glad not to have attended that school, are clear. (They were also big steps in the training of Kate Chase as an important society hostess, and therefore a political figure in Washington.) A good student of history at FLC, who’s worked through this module, reminds me: it’s unusual for historians to cover a process in one short paragraph like this one. Kate Chase’s complete school routine, hard for her to struggle through, is quick to describe, thank goodness. The more common way to write about a process is to break it down into separate steps. Each important step might become the topic sentence of a paragraph. Each paragraph would contain details telling how that step would be carried out, and leading to the next paragraph-step. We can illustrate this pattern, process through paragraphs, by imagining what a slave family would have to do to become free in the Lincoln years. (Topic sentences and key details will be highlighted.) First, a paragraph would describe the slaves running away from a Southern plantation. Would the slaves head North, aided by the Northern network of volunteer escape agents and houses with places to hide, called the Underground Railroad? Or would the slaves go straight for the Union Army lines and hope that the Northern soldiers would kindly take them in as “contraband of war” (enemy property)? When Lincoln signed the final Emancipation Proclamation, the process would speed up some. Slaves would not be instantly free everywhere in the Continental United States (that goal was beyond Lincoln’s presidential powers under the Constitution); but rather, since slaves were considered the enemy’s “property,” the Proclamation declared all slaves in the rebel states to be free. That is, under Lincoln’s military power, slaves could be taken away from their owners, as property being used to aid the illegal rebellion. Or slaves could continue to drop out of their plantation duties, and run away with even better chances of success, as the Union armies came near. But, as Lincoln explained his policy, slaves could not be seized the way any other property, like horses and cattle, is seized in wartime, for slaves are people. As people, the men among them could fight for the Union, providing badly needed reinforcements and stripping away the South’s enslaved crew of laborers and field hands. But to persuade them to run and come over to the Northern side, they must be promised freedom; people choose to do 19
Process Guide, Part Two things when they are promised things in return. And since it was made to people, said Lincoln, that promise of freedom, once made, “must be kept.” But another step was needed. Slavery would be extinct in the states that refused to surrender and rejoin the union. But slavery under the Constitution was still legal: in loyal states such as Delaware, and in the “neutral” border states, not openly hostile and still in the Union more or less willingly, such as Kentucky. The only way slavery could be outlawed everywhere was through a new Thirteenth Amendment, which Lincoln worked diligently to have passed by Congress and then ratified by the states. (It entered the Constitution shortly after Lincoln’a assassination.) So the process already in place continued. With the Proclamation, Confederate slaves were instantly free forever. When Northern soldiers conquered a rebel Confederate state, that freedom took practical effect. But what did all this mean? Many of the freed slaves took up weapons and became valiant soldiers or sailors for the North; their families came with them. But what should they do for a living in peacetime? Southern slaveholders, afraid that literate slaves could write messages stirring one another to revolt against their owners, made sure that almost no slave learned to read or write. Many toiled at small trades, like shoeing horses or tilling the fields; but what real training did they have for citizenship, for voting or running for office, for farming in skillful and systematic ways on their own farms? A program of action to help the ex-slaves was needed. And so the Freedmen’s Bureau was organized as a Cabinet-level agency, under Lincoln’s authority. I can’t go into too much detail, though history students remember that the Bureau is supposed to have promised “forty acres and a mule” to able-bodied ex-slaves willing to work as farmers; and ambitious programs of education were tried out. The important thing here is to see how the steps of a process may be spread over several paragraphs, for easier explanation. A point should be made: crucial processes, long part of history and unchangeable in our eyes, took much trial and error to work out at the time. Here, Lincoln’s experience, and that of the Congress and cabinet, was of improvising several steps to speed or modify the difficult process of emancipation, as conditions changed. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension SelfAssessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member.
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Process Guide, Part Two Classification Classification is what historians often use when a paragraph must discuss more than one or two persons, concepts, key terms, events, historical circumstances, or pieces of evidence in detail. That is, classification is needed when one topic is broken into at least three classes or categories. A classification paragraph will provide several items, each item being a category to talk about in detail. (The topic sentence may name the categories.) A classification paragraph may look similar to a definition paragraph. But rather than define each item in full, the author may simply list the details: characteristics, objects, ideas, or events associated with the item. The author may not have enough space to do more. When an author includes any item in a classification pattern, that item is part of a larger topic, a “family” of such items or categories. We group items in such a family when we classify cloud types: cumulus (heaped puffs of cloud), stratus (even, straight layers of cloud), cirrus (more feathery wisps), or nimbus (clouds heavy with rain or actually raining). You can probably tell that this writer is straining a bit to describe classification; it’s easier to show it than to write about it. Classifications lend themselves to the making of maps: Cloud Types
Cumulus
Stratus
Cirrus
(heaped puffs) (even layers) (feathery wisps)
Nimbus
(raincloud)
Paragraphs of classification, when closely read, will reveal details that can be mapped in a similar way. Such is the case with a paragraph in Goodwin’s book. Lincoln, before running for president, became famous for his “house divided” speech. This speech compared the Union to “a house in danger of collapse under the relentless pressure of the slavery issue.” Four “architects,” said Lincoln, were pressing the slave issue. Lincoln identified these builders only as “Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James,” each one working by a hidden plan to distort the “house” into a shape of their liking. Goodwin uses a classification pattern to identify the conspiratorial “architects,” each one an actual politician of the day: If “the point of this rather elaborate *house+ metaphor seems obscure today,” the historian James McPherson observes, “Lincoln’s audience knew exactly what he was talking about.” The four conniving Democratic carpenters were Stephen Douglas, 21
Process Guide, Part Two architect of the lamentable Nebraska law [making slavery admissible in U.S. territories] and vocal defender of the Dred Scott decision; Franklin Pierce, the outgoing president who had used his last annual message to underscore the “weight and authority” of Supreme Court decisions even before the Court had completed its deliberations in the Dred Scott case; Roger Taney, the Chief Justice who had authored the revolutionary decision; and James Buchanan, the incoming president who had strongly urged compliance with the Supreme Court decision a full two days before the opinion was made public. Working together, these four men had put slavery on a path to “become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new─North as well as South.” *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension SelfAssessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. Transition Words and Phrases Paragraphs that successfully engage the reader keep the reader’s mind moving forward and digesting the information the writer offers. In this forward-moving process, you should feel that you are successfully connecting the ideas, working with the words and organizing them into patterns. Transition words and phrases are the signals a good writer sends that reader to reveal pattern. Here is a sample list of transition words, compiled by the University of Richmond Writing Center, but modified (additions in bold). Examples of Transitions: Illustration (I) Or Definition (D)
Thus (I), for example (I), for instance (I), namely (D), to illustrate (I), in other words (D), in particular (I), specifically (I), such as (I), what this means is (D), that is (D), ____ [term to be defined], or ____ (D).
Contrast
On the contrary, contrarily, notwithstanding, but, however, nevertheless, in spite of, in contrast, yet, on one hand, on the other hand, rather, or, nor, conversely, at the same time, while this may be true.
Addition
And, in addition to, furthermore, moreover, besides, than, too, also, both-and, another, equally important, first, second, etc., again, further, last, finally, not only-but also, as well as, in the second place, next, likewise, similarly, in fact, as a result, consequently, in the same way, for example, for instance, however, thus, therefore, otherwise.
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Process Guide, Part Two Time
After, afterward, before, then, once, next, last, at last, at length, first, second, etc., at first, formerly, rarely, usually, another, finally, soon, meanwhile, at the same time, for a minute, hour, day, etc., during the morning, day, week, etc., most important, later, ordinarily, to begin with, afterwards, generally, in order to, subsequently, previously, in the meantime, immediately, eventually, concurrently, simultaneously.
Space
At the left, at the right, in the center, on the side, along the edge, on top, below, beneath, under, around, above, over, straight ahead, at the top, at the bottom, surrounding, opposite, at the rear, at the front, in front of, beside, behind, next to, nearby, in the distance, beyond, in the forefront, in the foreground, within sight, out of sight, across, under, nearer, adjacent, in the background.
Concession
Although, at any rate, at least, still, thought, even though, granted that, while it may be true, in spite of, of course.
Similarity Or Comparison
Similarly, likewise, in like fashion, in like manner, analogous to.
Emphasis
Above all, indeed, truly, of course, certainly, surely, in fact, really, in truth, again, besides, also, furthermore, in addition.
Details
Specifically, especially, in particular, to explain, to list, to enumerate, in detail, namely, including.
Examples
For example, for instance, to illustrate, thus, in other words, as an illustration, in particular.
Consequence Or Result Or Effect (related to cause/effect)
So that, with the result that, thus, consequently, hence, accordingly, for this reason, therefore, so, because, since, due to, as a result, in other words, then.
Summary
Therefore, finally, consequently, thus, in short, in conclusion, in brief, as a result, accordingly.
Suggestion
For this purpose, to this end, with this in mind, with this purpose in mind, therefore.
While this list is useful, it can never be complete. Resourceful history writers know that the situations they describe often require them to invent connecting words of their own. Doris Kearns Goodwin is good at making her own connections. Let’s see how she starts certain paragraphs, since beginnings are good places for transitions. Here, a paragraph begins after Mary Todd Lincoln has just spent a lot of money to redecorate the White House, partly because it needed it, but also because she’s aware that her competition is the beautiful and brilliant hostess Kate Chase: 23
Process Guide, Part Two Never one to be outdone, Kate Chase was hard at work decorating her father’s new home─a large three-story brick mansion at Sixth and E Street NW… Further down the page, the Chase-Lincoln competition continues: So, like Mary Lincoln, Kate traveled to New York and Philadelphia to purchase carpets, draperies, and furniture… While the competition never concludes, at least in Goodwin’s book, Kate achieves at least one aim behind all her furious hostessing─to capture an eligible bachelor, the wealthy William Sprague, mentioned here: For his part, Sprague would never forget his first sight of Kate… Such invented transition devices, like the more formal ones, are the oil that keeps the machine of historical narrative running smoothly. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension SelfAssessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. The Reading Process All this information would be incomplete if we couldn’t describe what the reading process is like. Students with too many questions about the reading process tend to feel frustrated about their reading. This frustration takes hold because questions like these have gone unanswered: What is the reading about? What’s the main idea? When is the right time to read for patterns of organization? How quickly should I read? And above all, Why did I just read the whole article and not understand it? That last question is perhaps the one most often asked by students coming to a reading and writing center for help. The student who asks it often fails to consider something that’s very important. College reading is not pleasure reading. We say this, not to scare you off, but to define the challenge. College reading is analytical reading. Pleasure reading, whether it’s a Harlequin Romance, a comic book or graphic novel, or an article in People, can be enjoyed quickly and forgotten completely, if the reader wishes. 24
Process Guide, Part Two There’s nothing wrong with such pleasure reading; in fact, you should read for pleasure, to maintain the reading habit. We’re simply saying that analytical reading is your main responsibility in college. Analytical reading does have its own pleasures, seen gradually. Analytical reading means reading to make sure you absorb the writer’s ideas and put them to use. Historical reading of this kind is not just finding facts, but going beyond the facts to learn what their importance is, why they are important, and how they connect. You must also do this careful reading in order to “distinguish interpretation from fact and to discern argument within description,” say the historians Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde. But the interesting thing is that you must do a certain amount of casual reading before settling in to do the closer analysis. Here is the reading process, which includes both casual and analytical steps: A.
Prepare your mind and body to read.
Establish your purpose for reading. You may need to learn the main idea of a historical reading, together with the major supporting details. You may be comparing several primary sources with what modern historians have to say about the primary documents. You might be studying important flows of ideas, migrations of people, significant inventions or patterns of trade, important battles and other conflicts and what caused or came from them…the list is long, but establishing your purpose should take only a few moments. Also, your big purpose may be to answer a specific question or respond to a specific assignment from your instructor? Does all this sound overwhelming? Relax. Just aiming for a purpose, even if you haven’t yet figured what that purpose is, turns on your brain. Predict the reading’s topic and probable content with help from the title. Brainstorm about what the title may mean. Glance over the first couple of paragraphs. Notice your mental and sensory impressions about the reading. Activate your schema, your prior knowledge. Tell yourself what you know about Abraham Lincoln, Pocahontas, the Puritans, the U.S. Constitution. Even if that knowledge is shaky or sketchy, it’s a basis. Start asking, “What audience was this historical work written for? How can I become part of that audience?” Asking questions as you read is tremendously important. B. Preview. That is, read, but don’t read in full. If the historical work is written in paragraphs, read slivers of these. Question what you’re reading about; predict whether the slivers relate to the title. In older documents, or in the writings of early modern historians, the paragraphs may be much longer than you’re used to. In this case, skim the ends as well as beginnings of paragraphs: they’re fairly good nesting places for main ideas and major supporting details, too. Remember that in historical writings, historians’ explanations, arguments, and interpretations─not just facts─may also be major supporting details. 25
Process Guide, Part Two As you skim through, don’t force your understanding of the patterns of organization; just be aware that they’re there. Start to locate transition words, headings, subheadings and other divisions of the material, in a loose, casual way. Think as you would when entering a darkened room, where your eyes must adjust to less light. Notice what words and key terms you may have to learn; but don’t linger over them. Mark them quickly and move on. C.
Now a complete reading, “once over lightly.”
Read the whole piece of writing without stopping. Begin firming up your sense of where the topic, the main idea, the major supporting details are. Get as much understanding as you can of why the author wrote this piece. Start to get answers to the questions you’ve been asking. Above all, don’t mark too much at this stage. Don’t use your underlining pencil or highlighter to “track” underneath the complete lines of text; that will give you way too much information to handle. D.
Read again. Understand. Annotate.
Now you’re settling in to “stay.” Read carefully, clearing away the confusions, deciding exactly how the material is put together. You should annotate, which means writing margin notes, in addition to very careful, selective underlining. Develop the habit of not giving up on a paragraph until you can write a note about it. Such notes are very important: you’re entering into a conversation with the writer of the material. Keep a dictionary close by. However, figuring words out from context may be more useful (and quicker). You may underline small amounts, but these underlinings are mostly clues for your margin notes. These notes should be paraphrases (in your own words). Another idea: write connecting lines or numbers or “doodads” in the margin to connect ideas, especially patterns of organization. But whatever you do, annotate after, not before, you’ve “got it.” E.
Evaluate. Review. Apply.
Now summarize, orally or in writing, the author’s main idea, major supporting details, and conclusions. Complete the worksheet appropriate to your assignment. As you do, monitor: if the unfamiliar words or concepts aren’t getting easier, use the dictionary, thesaurus, or any glossary the author may have provided. Join with a study buddy. Now, reconnect your purpose for reading with the author’s purpose for writing. If you’ve understood the author’s narrative, argument, interpretation, summation of events, or other line of reasoning, you should probably be preparing for a quiz, test, or written response. To reconnect and apply your knowledge, revisit your preview step, but call it review. To review effectively, take the same overview of the material as with preview. Find the exact structures within the material that first guided you to an understanding: title, topic, main 26
Process Guide, Part Two idea, headings and subheadings, and major supporting details, concepts, or arguments. Do your margin notes fit this framework? Will your summary of the material make sense, especially when told to somebody else? If your summary is hard to remember, or if you need more grasp of the supporting ideas, make flash cards of important concepts. Take the margin notes you’ve made and expand them into a summary. Or condense them into a map or outline. Connect the notes from your reading with your notes of the professor’s in-class lecture, or of group discussion. The result of review is to feel that your understanding of all this history, though it may have seemed dry, now has a real use. *** Stop. Did you remember to annotate after you read? Now complete a “Comprehension SelfAssessment” worksheet and have it discussed and initialled on the Signoff sheet by an RWC staff member. A Note About Primary and Secondary Sources When reading history with an analytical eye, or reading critically, keep in mind exactly what pieces of writing you’re dealing with. Historians classify historical records in three loose categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. All three kinds of source material may be helpful, even important. No material is perfect. Perfection in the human record is impossible. Thus, each document, each piece of writing must be judged individually for its reliability. Primary sources are actual documents from the historical period you happen to be dealing with. They are extremely diverse: diaries and journals; letters to family members; deeds, wills, company charters, inventories of property (including, in our troubled history, slaves); reports of court cases and judicial decisions; argumentative pamphlets and pieces of propaganda; important founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights (along with related state constitutions), or the Gettysburg Address. Do remember that, in most cases, a primary document was written with a specialized purpose and a specialized audience in mind. You should therefore scan the document for crucial small pieces of information. Also, the document, even if written for the widest possible audience, may be biased. “Biased” does not necessarily mean prejudiced or bigoted; it simply means that no one can stay perfectly objective, clear-eyed and judgment-free when writing about personal matters. Primary documents, written by limited, imperfect human beings, inevitably contain strong viewpoints, errors, blind spots. ↓ 27
Process Guide, Part Two
Despite the problem of bias, we’re obligated to read such documents with a certain respect and open-mindedness; the writer of a document can at least claim to have “been there,” and to serve us as an eyewitness to the historical scene. As an example of our nation’s valuable primary sources, we have the notes that Founding Father James Madison took while listening to the debates of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. These debates helped create the U. S. Constitution. Historians, and also lawyers and politicians, use such eyewitness notes to clarify the meaning of a law; the notes are important clues to “legislative intent.” “[In history,] ‘biased’ does not necessarily mean prejudiced or bigoted; it means that no one can stay perfectly objective, cleareyed and judgment-free when writing about personal matters.”
Secondary sources are essays, chapters, and whole books written or compiled by actual historians from primary and other documents. Because these secondary documents are the work of university-trained historians with scholarly expertise, they are usually written with a certain objectivity, a basic fairness and freedom from bias. However, this basic fairness does not mean a complete absence of viewpoint. Historians often disagree strongly in their interpretations of the historical record: Howard Zinn, Charles and Mary Beard, Joyce Badgley Hunsaker (of Seeing the Elephant, a book about the Oregon Trail), Stephen Ambrose, and Taylor Branch are writers with clear historical or political biases. Yet all these writers listen to opposing views and place these fairly on the record before responding with arguments of their own. Above all, they agree with other mainstream historians on one principle: points of interpretation must be separate from matters of fact. We consider these authors to be writers of secondary sources. Tertiary sources, a third level of source material, may be quickly dealt with. These are encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works made up of primary and secondary sources intermingled. Although these brief articles or digests are put together by qualified scholars, such as reference librarians, these tertiary sources are good introductions, or last resorts. But, to most professors, they are not truly reliable sources, just as reference librarians are not fully trained historians. Use third-level sources to build up your background knowledge, but then make sure you have primary or secondary sources to cite in your written work. Thank you for reading this far. At this point, you should feel ready to explore the rest of the module. You may now move ahead to the readings and brief written worksheets, as indicated on the Procedures page. Good luck and happy history!
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Process Guide, Part Two History Reading Process Guide Comprehension Self-Assessment What’s the section of the Process Guide you just read?
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Before writing answers to the following, look over your annotations. What did the section you read tell you? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Was any part of that section unclear? Why? In what way could it be made clearer? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ In what ways will you apply, or put to use, what you’ve learned? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ We appreciate your feedback. A class handout is only as good as the use you can make of it.
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Process Guide, Part Two Signoff Sheet for RWC History Reading Module Process Guide read, annotated, responded to as shown below Introductory portion read, annotated, written response, discussed ____(IS) The Basic Unit: The Paragraph read, annotated, response, discussed
____(IS)
Patterns: Organizing Paragraphs read, annotated, response, discussed ____(IS) Different Patterns/Different Needs read, annotated, response, discussed ____(IS) Transition Words and Phrases read, annotated, response, discussed ____(IS) The Reading Process read, annotated, written response
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Note About Primary / Secondary Sources read, annotated, response
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Summary Checklist read, annotated, discussed
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Reading in Primary Source previewed, read, annotated, analyzed (Alexander Falconbridge on the Middle Passage)
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Reading in Secondary Source previewed, read, annotated, analyzed (Goodwin, from Team of Rivals)
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Reading in Primary Source previewed, read, annotated, analyzed (Lincoln, Second Inaugural)
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Reading in Secondary Source previewed, read, annotated, analyzed (Koch, “A ‘New’ FDR”)
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Reading in Primary Source previewed, read, annotated, analyzed (Frederick Douglass speech)
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Reading in Secondary Source previewed, read, annotated, analyzed (Levy, “Celebrated,” on Robert Carter III or Barzun, “History Is Past and Present Life”)
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All assignments complete, 1 unit awarded
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