5.

Choose some point you made in your annotations of Bartolomae and Petrosky and
expand on that point. Is there an interesting way you can use your annotation to extend
B & P's ideas or to show the limitations of B & P's ideas?

At the beginning of the reading, I underlined “..the pages before you will begin to

speak only when the authors are silent and you begin to speak in their place…” and

commented that this part of the sentence might be the main idea of the reading. The

sentence talks about the reader interpreting the author’s reading on their own and when

that happens, the author has left a “mark” on you which refers to the heading of the

paragraph, “Making a Mark.” Then throughout the reading, Bartolomae and Petrosky

expands on the main idea by mentioning repeatedly that a reader does not need to rely

on an expert’s analysis on what they are reading. Instead, the reader should focus on

how the text that they are reading speaks to them and reflect on how the text makes

them feel. A consequence of a reader relying on others (experts) would be that they can

lose focus of what they actually read and remember/memorize what they have been

told. Therefore, the response of the reader might not be their true response or what they

really think about the text because they might have stuck with the response that an

expert told them.

Furthermore, Bartolomae and Petrosky explicitly says that there are some

readings that are not meant for asking experts of their analysis on the reading. The

writers mentioned Geertz’s, “Deep Play:Notes of the Balinese Cockfight,” and how that

essay is meant for readers to interpret it themselves. Geertz wrote the essay so that it

could speak to the readers and experts because the meaning of the essay is different

than what it means to the readers.