As you begin reading The Return of Martin Guerre, spend at least 15–20 minutes “previewing the book” and making an “inventory” and reading plan, so that you will be able to approach your reading of the book more intentionally.

“Previewing the text” means, as explained in the module resources and in class, examine the table of contents and page through the book to get a sense of its parts. The “inventory” is the loose outline you create for yourself of the major parts of a book, used to help guide your reading and note-taking.

If you have the book in hand, you probably also want to read the back cover copy and a few paragraphs of the introduction, as well as, perhaps, the first paragraphs of a couple chapters that look especially important, to get a sense of the text’s parts, how you should use them, and which ones you should plan to spend the most time on.

This assignment has two parts!

PART ONE: Inventory of the text (7 points)* —

Upload your revised “inventory” or working outline of the text.

Your inventory can take one of two forms:

(a) an annotated table of contents (an annotated PDF, or a photo of one annotated by hand), or

(b) a mind map (produced at https://www.mindmup.com/ (Links to an external site.) and saved as a PDF, or a photo of one drawn by hand).It should divide the text into at least 4 sections or categories of elements and highlight in a clear way what you plan to spend most of your time on when reading. (If needed, here’s a PDF of the Table of Contents you could annotat

PART TWO: Reading plan (6 points)* —

Add a comment to your submission on Canvas, once you’ve uploaded it! (If you need them, there are instructions on how to view and add comments on Canvas (Links to an external site.) here.)

Your comment should include at least 5 sentences building a “reading plan” from your outline and should do three things:

(a) state which 1–2 parts of the book you plan to spend the most time on and why;

(b) state which part or parts you might spend less time on and how you might limit time spent on them (e.g. by skimming certain sections, or by only referring to a section if you have specific questions); and

(c) state how you will adapt at least one of the active reading strategies we’ve practiced so far or that you’ve seen your peers use as you read the book.

For full credit, make sure that your comments are specific and applied to parts of the book that we’re reading!

(That is, don’t just say you’ll focus on important parts and skim others. Instead, identify parts from The Return of Martin Guerre that you think fall into each category, and explain the technique of skimming you would use, e.g., only reading the first sentence of every paragraph.)