Teaching Note: 

This activity is one that is useful for many different situations but works especially well in a remote or hybrid setting. It asks students to engage virtually through social annotation. For an ENA class, you might introduce the text to students prior to the ENG 101 section where you will be handling the text. Allow the students to in ENA 101 “first dibs” on making comments about a challenging text- perhaps even after you’ve discussed it; then you can bring in the G101 section to continue the conversation.  Generally, you can do this most easily using Perusall or Hypo.thesis though you could also do it in Google Docs.  If you need guidance on any of those tools, please reach out to a WPA. 

Student Activity

Directions for Students: 

Read pages 220-222 of Swales “The Concept of a Discourse Community”  in Perusall and make at least 4 annotations- 1 of these MUST be your opinion about the ideas that Swales presents. 

We make annotations for several reasons when we are reading. You might focus your annotations on the following ideas:

1. What has confused me in this passage?
2. Are there terms or phrases that I need to provide definitions for to make my reading more complete? 
3. Jot down your opinion on what you are reading? 
4. What connections can you make between what you are reading and what we have discussed in class? 

After you’ve annotated the passage, summarize in your own words what you’ve understood about Swale’s characterization about Discourse Communitites and post that to the Blackboard Forum.