Discussion Questions

You will be responsible for posting two different kinds of discussion questions this term: close reading questions and critical questions. You will write close reading questions about Pride and Prejudice, It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story and Mona in the Promised Land. You will write critical questions about the readings selected by each of the group-led discussion groups, with the exception of your own.

Close reading questions

What close reading questions do

As we’ve discussed, the first step in the close reading process is reading carefully and paying attention to details and individual words, rather than jumping straight to interpretation. In other words, instead of starting by asking what a text means, focus first on what it says, and then, once you’ve figured that out, begin to ask why a text says what it says, why it says something in a particular way, and what the effect of saying something in that way might be. That’s where the close reading question comes in.

How to write a close reading question

Remember that your question is intended to help you analyze the reading. As such, it should be substantial, detailed, and specific. It should pose one of the why or how questions that you ask after you’ve completed a careful close reading of a text.

Begin with several sentences (at least 2, but no more than 4) that describe what you noticed in your reading that led you to ask your question. Be specific and detailed in describing the situation as clearly as you can. If your question is prompted by contextual or historical information, include that in your description, but remember, your question should focus primarily on what’s happening on the page. Include any relevant short quotations that show the words or phrases that are important to your observations, but be judicious with your use of quotation. The close reading question should demonstrate your ideas and queries; it should not repeat large sections of the text. Be sure to cite page numbers for each quotation in parentheses after the quotation marks.

Some example close reading questions

When Mr. Collins asks Mrs. Bennett about her daughters’ eligibility, her reply is full of fragments and em-dashes. Mrs. Bennett says the same thing several times in the space of a sentence, saying “she could not take it upon her to say,” and “she could not positively answer” (51). What do these characteristics of Mrs. Bennett’s speech communicate about her attitude toward her daughters and toward Mr. Collins?

In the space of a few lines, the narrative perspective shifts multiple times. The narrator tells us that Mr Darcy “was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes on Elizabeth,” and then, in the same sentence, that “Elizabeth happen[ed] to see the countenance of both as they looked at each other” (52-53). Just a few lines later, the narrator tells us that Mr. Bingley, “without seeming to have notice what passed, took leave” (53). What does the narrator’s shifts in perspective communicate about the meeting described? How do the different characters’ responses affect our understanding of the social dynamics in this scene?

Mrs. Phillips is introduced in a very long sentence with multiple embedded clauses that begins with the fact that Mrs. Phillips is glad to see her nieces and ends with Mr. Collins’s introductions. Two sentences later we get another lengthy sentence that begins, “Mrs. Phillips was quite awed by such an excess of good breeding,” and concludes with information about Mr. Wickham (53). How are these sentences structured? What does the form of these sentences communicate about Mrs. Phillips?

Close reading questions to avoid

Again, close reading questions are intended to provoke discussion. This means that they should require considerably more than a yes or no answer. Other types of questions that are not appropriate for close reading questions include:

Questions that are a matter of taste or opinion
Isn’t Mary the worst? Don’t the people in this book talk too much?

Questions of fact or definition
What is “obsequiousness”?

Questions beyond the scope of the text
What happened in Mr. Collins’s first meeting with Lady Catherine de Bourgh?

Questions that are clearly answered by the text
Does Mr. Darcy know who Mr. Wickham is?

Questions only the author’s ghost can answer
Why does Austen write such long sentences?

How not to disturb the author’s ghost

Note that the last question to avoid is very similar to the first example close reading question above. Framing something in terms of why an author did something a certain way is often tempting, but that sort of question doesn’t get us very far. Since we usually can’t ask the author him or herself, all we can do is speculate, which isn’t all that helpful. And even if we could ask the author, the answer would just be the beginning of a series of more important questions: Do we think the author’s answer is supported by the details of the text? How, if at all, does this change our reading of the text? Ultimately, what the author might have to say is less important than how what’s happening on the page affects the way we read and engage with the text, and that’s what you want your questions to focus on.

Critical questions

To help you prepare to be an engaged participant in the group discussions, you should choose one of the day’s readings and write a specific, focused question about it. Your critical question should point to a specific place in the text where the author is making an interesting, controversial, or even suspect claim.

How to write a critical question

You should begin by describing that claim in 1-2 sentences, using only your own words. When summarizing an argument, direct quotation is a crutch that you should try to avoid: if you cannot re-state a claim in your own words, without relying on the author’s language at all, there’s a good chance you don’t fully understand the claim yet.

After you have summarized the claim that interests you (and included a page number citation after the summary), write a sentence or two explaining what you find notable about this particular claim. What drew your attention to this part of the argument? Was the vocabulary or structure interesting or unusual? Is the claim unexpected or extreme? Is it a particularly important part of the argument? What makes you view it as important?

Finally, ask a question that extends your observations about what you found interesting in the claim you chose. You might ask about structure—how the claim relates to the argument as a whole, or where it fits into a larger debate. Or you might ask about evidence—does the evidence support this claim, what evidence might be added to the argument to better support it, or what evidence might undermine or disprove the claim. You might ask about how the claim can be extended beyond the argument, or whether it breaks down when it’s extended in such a way.

Example critical questions

Your critical question might look like the two below, although there are many other forms your question could take:

John Smith claims at the end of his essay that all cats should be euthanized because they wreak havoc on local wildlife. This seems like a pretty extreme position to take, especially since Smith notes that cats often keep disease rates low in places with large rodent populations. What evidence might Smith have offered to more fully support this claim?

Before making his case for a cat-free society, John Smith argues that there is a large body of research about the cultural importance of cats. His discussion of this research is extensive and often eloquent. What function does this section serve in the overall structure of the argument?

Critical questions to avoid

The guidelines about inappropriate question topics for close reading questions apply to critical questions, as well. You should avoid asking questions that can be easily and definitively answered, and should aim for questions that will provoke discussion and even debate among your classmates.

Grading

Discussion questions are worth one point each and will be graded on a check plus/check/check minus basis. A question will receive a check minus if it fails to meet the minimum requirements of the assignment: if it lacks a substantive description, if it fails to focus on a single passage in the text, or if it asks a question on the list of questions to avoid. A discussion question that receives a check plus is one that asks a particularly insightful, striking or otherwise unexpected question, or one that notices something especially interesting and significant in the text; in other words, a question that goes well beyond the expectations of the assignment.

A check plus is equal to 1 point, a check to 0.8 points, and a check minus to 0.5 points. Over the course of the term, you will submit nine discussion questions; I will average the top eight.