CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Four A's Reading Response (10 Points)
Assignment Goals
The goals of this assignment are:- To meet a text four different ways before judging it
- To read against your own values, assumptions, and intentions
- To anchor every reaction in a specific quoted passage
- To prepare for seminar discussion with positions you can cite
The Assignment
Purpose
This is a reusable reading response that I may assign for any week’s reading, either as an alternative to that week’s writing prompt or alongside it; the assignment for the week will tell you which. Its purpose is to make you read against your own values and intentions: most of us decide what we think of a text before we have finished meeting it, and the Four A’s protocol guarantees that you meet the text four different ways — as a diagnostician, an ally, an opponent, and an admirer — before you settle on a judgment. It is adapted from a group discussion protocol developed for the National School Reform Faculty (Gray, J., “Four ‘A’s Text Protocol,” National School Reform Faculty (NSRF), https://www.nsrfharmony.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FourAsTextProtocol-N.pdf).
The Four A’s
As you read (this works best during pass two of the three-pass strategy), mark the text for four questions:
- Assumptions: What assumptions does the author hold? Every author writes from beliefs they never argue for, and finding them is the first act of reading like a scholar rather than a fan or a critic.
- Agree: What do you agree with in the text? Even a text you resist gets something right, and saying precisely what earns you the standing to disagree with the rest.
- Argue: What do you want to argue with? This is where your marginal push-back becomes a position — not a mood of resistance but a specific objection to a specific passage.
- Aspire: What parts of the text do you aspire to? Somewhere in every text on this syllabus is a sentence you wish you had written or a way of seeing you want to carry with you; naming it is how the text becomes yours.
Task: The Written Response
For this individual written adaptation of the protocol, write one short paragraph (or 2-3 rich bullets) for each of the four A’s, and anchor each one with at least one quoted passage from the text (with a page or line reference). The whole response should come to roughly the equivalent of 1-2 paragraphs of the usual weekly response — this is a compact form, and the discipline is in choosing the passages, not in padding the prose. Submit your response through Canvas before the start of class.
Criteria
A strong response meets all four A’s honestly (a response whose “Argue” section is empty has not yet argued with itself), quotes a specific passage for each, and shows the four readings genuinely differing — the passage you argue with should not be the same move as the passage you aspire to, unless you can say why it is both.
The In-Class Version
We will sometimes run the Four A’s as a live seminar protocol, so you should recognize it when it appears: in groups, everyone marks the text silently for the four A’s, then shares in rounds — one “A” per round — with each person citing the specific passage behind their point before the group moves to the next A. The protocol closes with an open round on what the text means for our work and our lives, followed by a brief debrief on the process itself. If you have written this response before class, you arrive with all four rounds already in hand.
Citation
Adapted from: Gray, J., “Four ‘A’s Text Protocol,” National School Reform Faculty (NSRF), https://www.nsrfharmony.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FourAsTextProtocol-N.pdf.
Formats (UDL)
You may render your response as four short paragraphs of prose, as labeled bullet lists (2-3 rich bullets per “A”), or as annotated quotations (each quoted passage followed by your labeled commentary), as long as all four A’s and their anchoring quotations are present.
See also: How to Read Hard Texts in CIE (/Assignments/ReadingGuide) for the three-pass strategy that makes marking for the four A’s nearly free, and The Machine Question (/Participation/MachineQuestion), where a miniature Four A’s can shape a commonplace entry.
Submission
Submit a word processed or PDF document through Canvas before the start of class.Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.