Close Reading Workshop: Close Reading of Informational/ Literary Nonfiction Texts  

Academic Vocabulary  

Diction refers to the writer’s choice of words.  

Connotation is the associations and emotional overtones attached to a word beyond its literal definition or denotation. 

Close Reading for Meaning  

What does learning to read closely mean? As readers, we should not just consider the subject or topic of a text. We must consider the author’s diction and the connotations associated with the words the author chooses.  

As a reader, consider the importance of specific words in order to analyze how the author uses language to communicate a message. For example, an author may use diction that would appeal to or be accessible to a specific audience. Additionally, the author will use words with strong connotations in order to appeal to an audience’s emotions.  

In this workshop, you will read three different texts and will practice close reading using strategies that will help you make meaning of the text. Your teacher will guide you through the first activity. In Activity 2, you will work in a collaborative group to read and respond to the text. For the third activity, you will work independently to apply close reading strategies to determine meaning in a new text.  

Activity 1  

Guided Practice  

You will read the text in this activity at least three times, focusing on a different purpose for each reading.  

First Reading: First Impressions  

Read the following passage silently. Your focus for this first reading is on understanding the meaning of the passage. As you read, practice diffusing the words you may not know by replacing unfamiliar words with synonyms or definitions for the italicized words. Use the definitions and synonyms above  the paragraphs to help your understanding.  

In addition, practice marking the text by stopping after each paragraph to underline the most important sentence and circle the most important word in the sentence that you underlined.  

Text Excerpt  

From The Americanization of Edward Bok (1921)  by Edward Bok  

1 Whatever shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of Americanization; however America may have failed to help my transition from a foreigner into an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity.  

potentialities: qualities that can be developed to make someone or something better; possibility of growth  

graft: join or unite closely  

2 As the world stands to-day, no nation offers opportunity in the degree that America does to the foreign-born. Russia may, in the future, as I like to believe she will, prove a second United States of America in this respect. She has the same limitless area; her people the same potentialities. But, as things are to-day, the United States offers, as does no other nation, a limitless opportunity: here a man can go as far as his abilities will carry him. It may be that the foreign-born, as in my own case, must hold on to some of the ideals and ideas of the land of his birth; it may be that he must develop and mould his character by overcoming the habits resulting from national shortcomings. But into the best that the foreign-born can retain, America can graft such a wealth of inspiration, so high a national idealism, so great an opportunity for the highest endeavor, as to make him the fortunate man of the earth to-day.  

fickle: likely to change; not constant or loyal  

3 He can go where he will: no traditions hamper him; no limitations are set except those within himself. The larger the area he chooses in which to work, the larger the vision he demonstrates, the more eager the people are to give support to his undertakings if they are convinced that he has their best welfare as his goal. There is no public confidence equal to that of the American public, once it is obtained. It is fickle, of course, as are all publics, but fickle only toward the man who cannot maintain an achieved success.  

insatiable: unable to be satisfied  

niggardly: stingily; not generously; miserly  

4 A man in America cannot complacently lean back upon victories won, as he can in the older European countries, and depend upon the glamour of the past to sustain him or the momentum of success to carry him. Probably the most alert public in the world, it requires of its leaders that they be alert. Its appetite for variety is insatiable, but its appreciation, when given, is full-handed and whole-hearted. The American public never holds back from the man to whom it gives; it never bestows in a niggardly way; it gives all or nothing.  

gulden: the basic currency of the Netherlands prior to 1999 

5 What is not generally understood of the American people is their wonderful idealism. Nothing so completely surprises the foreign-born as the discovery of this trait in the American character. The impression is current in European countries—perhaps less generally since the war—that America is given over solely to a worship of the American dollar. While between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to say, from personal knowledge, that the Dutch worship the gulden infinitely more than do the Americans the dollar.  

veneer: a deceptive show; a fake cover  

6 I do not claim that the American is always conscious of this idealism; often he is not. But let a great convulsion touching moral questions occur, and the result always shows how close to the surface is his idealism. And the fact that so frequently he puts over it a thick veneer of materialism does not affect its quality. The truest approach, the only approach in fact, to the American character is, as Sir James Bryce has so well said, through its idealism.  

endeavor: effort or work toward a specific goal or purpose  

7 It is this quality which gives the truest inspiration to the foreign-born in his endeavor to serve the people of his adopted country. He is mentally sluggish, indeed, who does not discover that America will make good with him if he makes good with her.  

scrupulous: principled; morally right  

8 But he must play fair. It is essentially the straight game that the true American plays, and he insists that you shall play it too. Evidence there is, of course, to the contrary in American life, experiences that seem to give ground for the belief that the man succeeds who is not scrupulous in playing his cards. But never is this true in the long run. Sooner or later—sometimes, unfortunately, later than sooner—the public discovers the trickery. In no other country in the world is the moral conception so clear and true as in America, and no people will give a larger and more permanent reward to the man whose effort for that public has its roots in honor and truth.  

endowed: supplied or equipped with  

9 “The sky is the limit” to the foreign-born who comes to America endowed with honest endeavor, ceaseless industry, and the ability to carry through. In any honest endeavor, the way is wide open to the will to succeed. Every path beckons, every vista invites, every talent is called forth, and every efficient effort finds its due reward. In no land is the way so clear and so free 

Check Your Understanding  

Choose one paragraph of the excerpt. Explain the relationship between the sentence that you underlined and the main idea of the paragraph. Also, explain how your understanding of the word you circled is important in terms of the meaning of the paragraph as a whole.  

Second Reading: Vocabulary in Context  

Now that you have read the passage silently, read the passage again aloud. As you read, circle the words and/or phrases that are examples of powerful, important, or emotional diction that communicates the writer’s attitude. Diffuse these words/phrases for comprehension. (Diffuse: either figure out word meaning by context, or look up word meaning.) 

After your teacher has read the passage aloud the second reading, look up the words or phrases that you circled and find several that describe America or the character of Americans. Make inferences about the connotations of these words and phrases in the chart below.  

Check Your Understanding  

Now that you have diffused unfamiliar terms and identified and analyzed Bok’s diction, write a brief summary of the central idea as presented in the first two paragraphs of the text. Explain how Bok’s use of connotative diction in these paragraphs contributes to this central idea.  

Third Reading: Text-Dependent Questioning  

Now read the passage again, this time with the focus of reading to respond to the Key Ideas and Details interpretive questions. Answer each question and circle or underline the textual evidence that supports your answer. You may also want to revise your answers to reflect a new or different meaning of the text.  

Background Information: This text is an excerpt from Edward Bok’s Pulitzer Prizewinning autobiography published in 1921, The Americanization of Edward Bok: An Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After. Bok was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, at age six. While Bok was editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, it became the first magazine in the world to have one million subscribers. He wrote his autobiography upon retiring after 30 years as Editor.  

From  

The Americanization of Edward Bok (1921)  

by Edward Bok  

1 Whatever shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of Americanization; however America may have failed to help my transition from a foreigner into an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity.  

2 As the world stands to-day, no nation offers opportunity in the degree that America does to the foreign-born. Russia may, in the future, as I like to believe she will, prove a second United States of America in this respect. She has the same limitless area; her people the same potentialities. But, as things are to-day, the United States offers, as does no other nation, a limitless opportunity: here a man can go as far as his abilities will carry him. It may be that the foreign-born, as in my own case, must hold on to some of the ideals and ideas of the land of his birth; it may be that he must develop and mould his character by overcoming the habits resulting from national shortcomings. But into the best that the foreign-born can retain, America can graft such a wealth of inspiration, so high a national idealism, so great an opportunity for the highest endeavor, as to make him the fortunate man of the earth to-day.  

3 He can go where he will: no traditions hamper him; no limitations are set except those within himself. The larger the area he chooses in which to work, the larger the vision he demonstrates, the more eager the people are to give support to his undertakings if they are convinced that he has their best welfare as his goal. There is no public confidence equal to that of the American public, once it is obtained. It is fickle, of course, as are all publics, but fickle only toward the man who cannot maintain an achieved success.  

4 A man in America cannot complacently lean back upon victories won, as he can in the older European countries, and depend upon the glamour of the past to sustain him or the momentum of success to carry him. Probably the most alert public in the world, it requires of its leaders that they be alert. Its appetite for variety is insatiable, but its appreciation, when given, is full-handed and whole-hearted. The American public never holds back from the man to whom it gives; it never bestows in a niggardly way; it gives all or nothing.  

5 What is not generally understood of the American people is their wonderful idealism. Nothing so completely surprises the foreign-born as the discovery of this trait in the American character. The impression is current in European countries—perhaps less generally since the war—that America is given over solely to a worship of the American dollar. While between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to say, from personal knowledge, that the Dutch worship the gulden infinitely more than do the Americans the dollar.  

6 I do not claim that the American is always conscious of this idealism; often he is not. But let a great convulsion touching moral questions occur, and the result always shows how close to the surface is his idealism. And the fact that so frequently he puts over it a thick veneer of materialism does not affect its quality. The truest approach, the only approach in fact, to the American character is, as Sir James Bryce has so well said, through its idealism.  

7 It is this quality which gives the truest inspiration to the foreign-born in his endeavor to serve the people of his adopted country. He is mentally sluggish, indeed, who does not discover that America will make good with him if he makes good with her.  

8 But he must play fair. It is essentially the straight game that the true American plays, and he insists that you shall play it too. Evidence there is, of course, to the contrary in American life, experiences that seem to give ground for the belief that the man succeeds who is not scrupulous in playing his cards. But never is this true in the long run. Sooner or later—sometimes, unfortunately, later than sooner—the public discovers the trickery. In no other country in the world is the moral conception so clear and true as in America, and no people will give a larger and more permanent reward to the man whose effort for that public has its roots in honor and truth.  

9 “The sky is the limit” to the foreign-born who comes to America endowed with honest endeavor, ceaseless industry, and the ability to carry through. In any honest endeavor, the way is wide open to the will to succeed. Every path beckons, every vista invites, every talent is called forth, and every efficient effort finds its due reward. In no land is the way so clear and so free…  

Key Ideas and Details  

Paragraphs 1-4 - Bok repeats the words limitless and opportunity several times in the opening paragraphs. What connotations do these words have, and what evidence does he give in the third and fourth paragraphs to support this characterization of America? 

Paragraph 5 - What is Bok referring to with the word valueless? Why is this an interesting word to use in the context of the main idea of this paragraph? 

Paragraph 6 - According to Bok, what is the relationship between American idealism and American materialism? What do you think he means by this? 

Paragraph 8 - What kind of evidence might appear to contradict Bok’s assertion that Americans play fair? How does he counter this evidence?  

Check Your Understanding  

Now that you have read closely and worked to understand the Key Ideas and Details of this text, choose one of the assertions Edward Bok makes about America or Americans and discuss whether or not you think the assertions that he made in 1920 are still true today.  

Synthesizing Your Understanding  

Now that you have read the passage three times and studied its vocabulary, language, and ideas, synthesize your understanding by applying the SOAPSTone strategy to this text. You have worked with all the elements of this strategy in previous reading workshops.  

Introducing the Strategy: SOAPSTone  

SOAPSTone is a strategy for analysis of a text to understand an author’s craft. Using this strategy, the reader discusses and identifies the speaker, the occasion, the audience, the purpose, the subject, and the tone.  

Answer the following SOAPSTone questions about The Americanization of Edward Bok (1921) by Edward Bok: 

S–Speaker Who is the speaker? Be more detailed than just identifying the individual by name. What is his or her position? What information about the speaker helps you understand his or her perspective? What characteristics of the speaker help you understand the meaning of the text?  

O–Occasion What is the occasion? Make inferences based on what you know about the time and the place of the piece. A piece of writing may be prompted by a larger occasion (an environment of ideas, attitudes, and emotions that surround a larger issue) and/or an immediate occasion (an event or situation that catches the writer’s attention and triggers a response.)  

A–Audience Who is the audience? What inferences can you make about the people who will read this text? Is it a specific person, a targeted group, or a general audience? How do you know?  

P–Purpose What is the purpose? What points is the author trying to make? What does he want the audience to feel or experience?  

S–Subject What is the general focus of this text, stated in a few words or phrases?  

Tone What is the author’s attitude toward his subject? How does his use of connotative diction convey this tone?  

Writing Prompt: Based on your current understanding of the passage, summarize the central idea and explain how Edward Bok uses connotative diction to develop his ideas and convey tone. Be sure to: 

• Identify a central idea in a topic sentence.  

• Provide several pieces of textual evidence that support your analysis.  

• Include commentary about the author’s use of connotative diction.  

Activity 2 

Visual Close Reading Practice  

Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, was the busiest immigrant inspection station in America’s history. Immigrants had to pass medical tests and legal inspections before they could enter the United States. During its peak years, Ellis Island often processed more than the 5,000 immigrants per day for which the facilities were designed.  

First Reading: Overview and Parts  

Write a brief overview of the content of the chart. Describe the graph with as much detail as possible. What does it demonstrate? Which details seem important or interesting?  

Second Reading: Reflect and Interpret  

What does the chart mean? What inferences can you make from the details? What conclusions can you draw from the information presented? How do you know?  

Third Reading: Questions  

What unanswered questions do you have about the chart? How and where would you find these answers?  

Political Cartoon About Immigration  

Published in 1921  

First Reading: Overview and Parts  

Write a brief overview of the content of the cartoon. Describe what is being pictured as accurately as possible. Which details seem important or interesting?  

Second Reading: Reflect and Interpret  

What is the tone and purpose of the cartoon? How do you know? What inferences can you make from the details? What conclusions can you draw?  

Third Reading: Questioning the Text  

What unanswered questions do you have about the cartoon? What open-ended questions could you ask to spark a discussion about the cartoon?  

Writing Prompt: Now that you have carefully examined one print text and two visual texts about American immigration, write an essay to explain how at least one of the visuals connects to Edward Bok’s autobiography. Be sure to 

• Create a thesis that explains a connection between two texts. 

• Provide support from both texts. 

• Include a conclusion that follows from your major points