Usually schools ask you to keep a journal or diary on a text to force you to actively process the material that is presented in your text. Here’s my EXHAUSTIVE ramble about keeping a text journal, diary or whatever you want to call it. If you wanted some ideas about a language analysis journal (similar but for the writing task) see the General Advice Directory. ( i wrote that too).
Read the text once right through without taking notes. This step, you don’t have to do, but it gives you an overview of what the book is about and you can enjoy the book for what it is. It also gives you an idea of the structure of the book so when it comes to reading and taking notes, your diary is easier to organise.
When you’re reading again to take notes, after every chapter (depending how many chapters you have and how long your book is), stop reading and start recording things down in your diary or journal.
On the left hand side pages write down factual information.PLOT: Summarise the plot (what has happened) in a few short sentences. (The shorter the better).
CHARACTERS: Keep track of when characters appear in the text, and note down when there is a description of them or where they star prominently.
REPETITION: Images, allegories, symbols, motifs are all very important to note down, especially if they are repeated. (Look these words up in the dictionary if you don’t understand them) Similarly if the same phrase or expression is repeated note that down.
On the right hand side pages, you write down your ideas. Think about the book and what has happened. Here are some thought provoking questions:
*What conclusions can you make after reading this section?
*Why has the author written this section in such a way?
*What is the significance of the actions of the characters?
*What are your feelings about what has happened?
*Why do the characters act like they do?
*How can they justify their actions?
*How has the setting and background influenced what has happened?
Your answers to these won’t be necessarily right, but you can always add to these or correct them later.
QUOTES: Keep a list of quotes that will be useful for exams. (You can do this separately, in another reading, and maybe write these down somewhere else) Quotes to look out for:
*Quotes that show a character’s personality.
*Quotes that describe a character’s feelings
*Quotes that describe setting, context, environment
*Quotes that provide a social comment, i.e. racial comments, sexist comments, political comments, etc.
So when you have a double page spread, on the left page, you will have a running summary of the book and on the right you will have a running commentary of the book.
Of course you can continually add to this book, adding comments by other people. And you don’t have to have it organised like the way I have described. Other ways include:
*Having two separates diaries/journals.
*Have the plot summary followed by the commentary on different pages.
Also, you don’t have to include everything as I have. You could do the quotes separately, or the plot summary separately, or the commentary separately.
So, hope you understand and have learnt some new ideas!
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