![]() ![]() What Do You Record In a Dialectical Journal? In an interview, Bill Gates - who happens to be a voracious reader - said that he wrote in the tiny margins of books while he read.Īccording to him, writing in the margins of a book helps him engage with the points that the author is making, and it also helps him make connections with his existing knowledge about the subject. This way, you’ll not only be able to retain much of the contents you are reading, but you’ll also gain a deeper understanding which you can then apply practically. You should employ the dialectical reasoning throughout until you’re finished with a particular text. We’ve to actively ask questions, make connections, evaluate the writer’s ideas, and identify themes and patterns. That’s because engaging with the text, on an intellectual level, doesn’t come naturally. If you are constantly distracted and have little attention span, you will find it difficult to follow the writer’s line of reasoning to the end of the chapter, much less the entire book. The writer makes many, many points in a sequential, logical manner. The purpose of a dialectical journal is to force you to think critically about the text.Īlthough you can try the dialectical journal technique with any form of text, but let us take the example of a book.Ī book is densely packed with ideas. What is the Purpose of a Dialectical Journal? There is no limit on how much you can write on any given passage, but keep in mind that your responses should be detailed and specific to the contents of the passage. Your goal is to ask questions, make predictions, record your thoughts, analyze the writer’s style and the literary choices made to set up a scene or draw patterns and themes. With that said, a journal response should not be less than five sentences. ![]() But how much can you write about one passage, anyway? Honestly, it doesn’t matter how long an entry should be. So how long should your dialectical entry be against a particular passage? The point is to not read or write passively but to actively engage in the argument with the writer as if you were having a conversation with him/her face to face.Īctively engage in the argument How Long Should a Dialectical Journal Response Be? Then, you proceed to ask questions, take it apart, connect other ideas to it, and draw insights in a column next to the passage. Once you like a passage, or are intrigued and confused by it, you go ahead write it down in the dialectic journal verbatim. The idea is to record and make note of the passages, sentences, turns of phrases, unfamiliar usage of vocabulary, insights, and ideas that appeal to you. Of course, you are not supposed to engage with every paragraph or sentence in the text. It’s about making parallels between the writer’s and the character’s experiences with your own experiences. It’s because we do not engage with the text.Įngaging with the text means absorbing yourself in its contents in such a way that you are making connections between the ideas mentioned in the book and other experiences and ideas. ![]() If anyone were to ask us to explain, in our own words, the main points of the book, we would be at a loss for words. We’ve all experienced that blank feeling when we are close to finishing a book. It is a way to facilitate the production of original ideas, to reach insights about the text and one’s own self, and to think clearly and critically about the ideas one reads. The same process of dialectical reasoning can be applied to studying any type of material with a view to broadening one’s understanding of a given text. He would then keep on asking questions indefinitely until the taken-for-granted assumptions would no longer hold. The ‘Socratic Method’ invented by the Greek philosopher Socrates is a dialectic process of arriving at logical answers.Įssentially, Socrates would pursue a line of reasoning, attacking the embedded assumptions within people’s answers to everyday questions, like what is the meaning of life or what is bravery? A dialectic journal is sometimes known as a double-entry journal or a reader-response journal.ĭialectic means the process of arriving at the truth through logical reasoning or asking questions. You are essentially journaling to record your own thoughts or even emotions experienced as you go through the text.
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