Today, a student asked me for a way to tackle the structure of the rough draft for the Close Reading assignment we’re currently doing. I’ve put together a rough outline below to hopefully help you all keep track of the types of things that should show up in your draft, as well as give you a sense of where they should be. Remember that you should be working in conversation with the author- you should tell us what they say, tell us how you’re responding, and then respond continually throughout the text. Initially, keep things a little more general, but still focused--- then, when you get to the body paragraphs, instead of working through big/main ideas, get down into more specific arguments. I’ve color coded things again to help you keep track of how the author’s ideas and your own can sit alongside each other throughout your work. Red= your words Purple= a mixture Blue= the author’s words 1. Introduction a. Give your reader some general background information i. What text are you introducing them to? ii. Who wrote the text? iii. What’s it about? b. Begin setting up your conversation with the author (complex claim) i. What do they say (in general)? ii. How did you react to those words/ideas (in general)? iii. What response do you have to those words? 2. Body paragraphs (each of your body paragraphs should have roughly the same info) a. Topic sentence/opening moves i. Which of the arguments from the author are you responding to? ii. What are you doing with that info? b. Get into what specifically about that opportunity (word/phrase/line) lead you to have that reaction (help them see the text without having to read it in full) c. Work through your explanation in a way that helps the reader understand by directly referencing the text piece by piece, but also thoroughly explaining your thought processes. d. Tell your reader why all of this matters, and what they stand to gain by trusting you and taking your arguments seriously. e. Explain how this specific argument supports your greater claim. 3. Repeat body paragraphs until done 4. Conclusion a. Rephrase your main idea, and your supporting points- try to really choose new words to explain what you’ve told your reader. b. Help the reader understand what benefit they’ll get from trusting/agreeing with your overall claim c. Tell your reader why they should care about that benefit. AlHamdan 1 Proposal Many individuals misunderstand what exactly is freedom. What is freedom? Freedom is not about acting without any resistant or barriers, or it is not about the situation of being enslaved. What really does freedom involve? What fascinated me about Mincy article is the way the individual is trying to explain how important it is to be free. It is really important to find internal peace than anything in this world (Mincy). If a person finds peace with themselves the individual would be able to appreciate the little things in life, such as being alive. Freedom is the common word used to try and let the ...

1. Today, a student asked me for a way to tackle the structure of
the rough draft for the Close Reading assignment we’re
currently doing. I’ve put together a rough outline below to
hopefully help you all keep track of the types of things that
should show up in your draft, as well as give you a sense of
where they should be. Remember that you should be working in
conversation with the author- you should tell us what they say,
tell us how you’re responding, and then respond continually
throughout the text. Initially, keep things a little more general,
but still focused--- then, when you get to the body paragraphs,
instead of working through big/main ideas, get down into more
specific arguments. I’ve color coded things again to help you
keep track of how the author’s ideas and your own can sit
alongside each other throughout your work.
Red= your words
Purple= a mixture
Blue= the author’s words
1. Introduction
a. Give your reader some general background information
i. What text are you introducing them to?
ii. Who wrote the text?
iii. What’s it about?
b. Begin setting up your conversation with the author (complex
claim)
i. What do they say (in general)?
ii. How did you react to those words/ideas (in general)?
iii. What response do you have to those words?
2. Body paragraphs (each of your body paragraphs should have
roughly the same info)
a. Topic sentence/opening moves
i. Which of the arguments from the author are you responding
to?

2. ii. What are you doing with that info?
b. Get into what specifically about that opportunity
(word/phrase/line) lead you to have that reaction (help them see
the text without having to read it in full)
c. Work through your explanation in a way that helps the reader
understand by directly referencing the text piece by piece, but
also thoroughly explaining your thought processes.
d. Tell your reader why all of this matters, and what they stand
to gain by trusting you and taking your arguments seriously.
e. Explain how this specific argument supports your greater
claim.
3. Repeat body paragraphs until done
4. Conclusion
a. Rephrase your main idea, and your supporting points- try to
really choose new words to explain what you’ve told your
reader.
b. Help the reader understand what benefit they’ll get from
trusting/agreeing with your overall claim
c. Tell your reader why they should care about that benefit.
AlHamdan 1
Proposal
Many individuals misunderstand what exactly is freedom. What
is freedom? Freedom is not about acting without any resistant or
barriers, or it is not about the situation of being enslaved. What
really does freedom involve? What fascinated me about Mincy
article is the way the individual is trying to explain how
important it is to be free. It is really important to find internal
peace than anything in this world (Mincy). If a person finds
peace with themselves the individual would be able to
appreciate the little things in life, such as being alive. Freedom
is the common word used to try and let the readers know that, it
is not wrong for them to break away from their normal lifestyle
and relax and find themselves once in a while. There are some
of the words that the author seems to use with freedom to

3. emphasis it. The term freedom is used continually with the
words free and wild. The words have been used consistently to
explain that being free is good for soul and mind. One of the
terms that the author tried using in relation to freedom is alive.
The author says being alive is an important because it is an
opportunity not many individuals in today’s life do appreciate.
Even though, the author insists on freedom, he seems to forget
that not every person sees nature as their place of comfort zone
in trying to find their internal piece. The world is of diverse
individuals and that each person has their own way of being free
and wild. What is contradicting about nature being a place of
finding freedom and internal piece is that there are a lot of
safety challenges, such as being face to face with a bear, like he
did experience. So, it is really important if an individual would
find their internal peace and live the moment (Mincy).
CLAIM
2
Claim
Mincy explains that “we have only a precious moment on this
earth, the blink of an eye regarding the eons in which we
measure geology, to understand boundless freedom”, which I
agree with (Mincy). I was fascinated with this point since its
true and certain. I feel that it true since every single person on
earth has one life to live and they should live it the way they
want to live. In this life on earth an individual should not be
strict with life but to run wildly and experience life as it is.
Experience all the emotions at a particular time and learn to
appreciate those emotions. Since, a person has one life to live,
when something like death happens, that life is cut short. Most
individuals when their days on earth ends, they are found in the
position that they did not appreciate the little things in life, they
did not live the moment. Also, nearly everyone who is on their
death bed, are always full of regrets. So it is really important if

4. one could live the moment. In order to understand freedom, it is
important if one experience the freedom of life.
● Opportunity for conversation
○ Opportunity in the text: How to recognize… a specific place
in the text
(word/phrase/line) that we can do something with
■ Places we can argue
■ Arguments that are happening
■ Quotations
○ Conversation
■ The discussion between the author and the audience
■ Listening and responding
■ Between you and the author
■ Between the author and their audience
■ Between you and your audience
● Audiences: Who are they?
○ Topic, language, style, tone
○ Culturally neutral pre-writing questions
○ Fascinate
■ Amazing/astonishing
■ Interesting
● Explain what fascinated you and why
● Learn more about the topic, and then tell us what you learned
or
what position you now hold now that you have more knowledge

5. ● How might other people view this thing? How do we make it
fascinating to them?
○ Shock
■ Surprise!
■ Either good or bad, but either way strong.
■ Amazed, or offended, or disgusted, devastated
● Try to respond- talk about the emotions you felt while
processing
this shock
● Why did it shock you?
● Compare it to normal behavior/opinions/feelings
● Look back and see if it’s true or not
● Look at your own opinions and values-- do you need to
rethink
them? What can you learn from this?
○ Perplex
■ Confusing or difficult to understand
● Restate and clarify the thing you found confusing
● Examples to clarify-- stay focused on the text though
● Don’t skip it. Be aggressively curious.
● Ask questions!!
○ Gap
■ Space between things
■ A gap in understanding between what the author means and
the audience
gets from their writing

6. ● Fill the gap with explanation
■ Missing information
■ Cultural ideals/values/experiences/religion
● Learn more so that you do understand
● Translate so that your reader can understand because you are
familiar with both cultures
● Don’t ignore it!
● Try to avoid the same misunderstandings in your own writing
● Identify your preconceptions/prejudgments
● Try to be open to new ideas
● Be respectful
○ Tension
■ Stressed, emotional, overworked, tight.
■ Fears, events, overly sensitive to criticism or other points of
view
■ The tension that comes from disruption of your world view
■ Offensive (not tolerant), disrespectful
■ Too honest or direct for the culture
● Try to relax the ideas/writer/points of view and allow for
others
● Try to smooth the situation
● Help foster respect for other ideas
● Try to help people understand each other
● Read with an open mind until the end (read generously)
○ Contradiction
■ When someone says two opposite things that disagree with
each other
● Maybe it’s intentional, and it’s up to you to figure out what
the

7. author is trying to do and explain it.
● Maybe the author is trying to highlight this contradiction to
make
people deal with it.
● Maybe they’re doing it accidentally: you correct them, or call
them
out on it.
○ Ambiguity
■ Unclear
■ Undecided
● Try to figure it out and make it clear
● Research a bit
● Try to figure out why the author is being ambiguous and what
they’re trying to teach us.
○ Difficulty
■ Do some research, figure it out!
■ Look at the difficulty- is it because the author can’t write, or
is it because
they’re talking about something for which there is no
established
language?
What I Have Learned from Nature
by Grant Mincy
Some of my fondest childhood memories are with my parents

8. hiking around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One
memory is particularly vivid. I was six and on the trail to
Abrams Falls after a summer rain moved through the forest. The
sun was just again peaking through the canopy. As my folks and
I moved along the trail I noticed water droplets on the leaves of
a rhododendron. We stopped for a rest next to the woody plant
along the bank of Abrams Creek. I sat down, letting my hands
feel the damp Earth, laden with bryophytes. I studied the beads
of water on the plant before turning my considerations to the
creek. My love for nature began young.
In the wild I am always in awe of water. Water, in its many
forms, occupies every part of the forest. Clouds are among my
favorite forms water takes. There is nothing like standing on a
green mountain bald on a cool spring day — the clouds steal the
show. Whether weeping grey or puffy white, when the land is
again bursting with life, clouds hug ridges and occupy valleys
in ways that can only be described as breathtaking. I once had
the holy experience of camping in the Blue Ridge of North
Carolina on a late Spring evening at over 5,000 feet. As I hiked
to camp I moved across mountain meadows covered in a thick
fog, but my destination sat above the clouds. That night around
a roaring bonfire, in the company of budding plants and a vast
array of newly awakened wildlife, there was a piercing, radiant
starry night above, and a sea of clouds cracking with lightning
below. All of the heavens witnessed Earth’s wonder.
From the clouds, in the chill of January, snow seems to
continually fall over temperate Appalachian forests. In the
winter, snow dusts the landscape, coating evergreens and the
naked limbs of deciduous trees. When running old trails in this
ancient terrain in the depths of the season, ones own breath is
often visible as it escapes the lungs. If, like I often do, one
follows this vapor in the white landscape, it is hard not to
notice the depth of the mountains this time of year. Though
peppered in white, something about the winter makes the
Appalachians appear dark. Perhaps it is exposed ancient
metamorphic rock, thick ice that clings to steep mountain ridges

9. and the bare grey bark of trees, but the color avoids a
description. The mountains are mysterious and beautiful beyond
words.
My favorite time in the woods, however, is Autumn. Fall air is
always brisk, the sky is often a beaming cerulean blue, and it is
of no mystery why the southern Appalachians are long
described as “smoky.” A thick mist settles in the mountains in
the fall and the forest changes dramatically daily. Some of my
favorite moments of solitude, and thus my life, are experienced
in the mountain lowlands in late autumn. Under the splendor of
November hue, on the banks of a stream I am often lost in
thought as I watch water carve its way through ancient rock
while, at the same time, laying the sediments that will tell
future travelers of our place in history. I swear one can feel the
terrain, littered with a mosaic of detritus, soaked in a thick mist,
and carved by the river continuum breathe this time of year.
Natural places are of incredible importance. John Muir once
wrote: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play
in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body
and soul.” This is a statement of deep ecological truth.
Nature is wild. In the wilderness one is wild. On an early
September afternoon a few years ago I escaped for a lone stroll
in the woods. I worked my way up and around Curry Mountain,
had lunch on a rock in the shade of a great Eastern Hemlock and
was making my way back home when I came across two black
bear along the switchbacks. They saw me before I saw them.
There was a quick dash, a scattering of leaves and I saw the
black fur of a cub run down slope – it was then I noticed the
mama bear. Standing in front of me some 20 yards away was a
rather large beast who was occupying the trail. We stood in
silence, staring at one another for sometime until she let out a
slow growl. I raised my hands to the air and loudly proclaimed,
“I mean you no harm, bear!” She turned and quickly
disappeared into the brush.
Knowing they were still near I kept talking loudly to them as I
slowly made my way through the switchbacks. As time passed I

10. picked up my pace. Before I knew it I was whooping, laughing
madly and running through the woods. I was jumping over
trickling springs, tree roots and piles of rock. I was full of joy,
my heart pounding furiously. I was myself, simply a human in
purest form, all labels stripped away, no worldly burdens — just
an animal, wild and alive!
This unbound freedom is possible only in the wild. There await
holy experiences everywhere in nature. Whether it is moments
of silent, still reflection, or adventurous swimming in the roar
of a river, swallowing its current, pelted by rain, breathing hard
and laughing under the chill of a night sky with brothers,
natural spaces provide us with a liberty that cannot be
experienced in urban corridors. Untouched landscapes are the
cathedrals of nature.
We cannot truly know freedom, nor understand absolute liberty,
without wilderness. The wild will exist long after human
civilization. We have only a precious moment on this Earth, the
blink of an eye regarding the eons in which we measure
geology, to understand boundless freedom. In the wilderness
there exist only the fixed laws of nature. There are no economic
systems, no political powers, no established authority, but
rather an anarchic freedom we are blessed to experience. In
open spaces we are free to live, even if just briefly, absent of
control or administration from the Leviathans of civilization.
This freedom alone is enough to protect wilderness landscapes,
for ourselves and fellow species — nature for nature’s sake.
Wilderness can exist without us, but we are doomed without it.
May we preserve wild lands – coasts, deserts, forests and
mountains – so we may preserve what makes life worth living:
Liberty.
Imagine the forest. Suddenly, with a crack of lightning and
thunderous boom, from dark, weeping clouds, falls a torrent of
water. Plummeting from the vivid horizon towards the lush,
ominous hue of green Earth, the cascade crashes into a mixed
canopy of poplar, oak, hemlock and spruce.
A rich, harmonious chorus fills the brilliant forest. A howling

11. melody of pattered rain pails the rhododendron, splats the
trillium, showers the fern, soaks the detritus and beads the moss
before saturating the damp, woodland floor. Beneath the soil,
among mycorrhizae, annelids and abundant microbes there is a
pull downslope, a burst from a spring and the rush of a high
country stream. Along twists and turns, crags and ridge, falls
and flow there is a longing for, and final jubilation with, the
communion of rivers roar. Among carved rock and knotted limb,
the journey across the watershed begins long toward the basin.
What a great, dangerous adventure!
Nothing but a dizzying wonder awaits beyond every fall, rapid
and maelstrom eddy. As clouds recede the Earth breaths a
mountain mist, illuminated by the sun, that instills natures heart
breaking splendor. Oh, be free young, wild torrent! In wildness
may you travel deeper still! Rush along your crooked channel
walls, carve the valley, shape the open plain, welcome the delta,
bask in the sea, rise to the heavens and fall once more!
Imagine yourself in this forest. A human animal. An individual.
Sitting, legs crossed on a moss laden log. The water showers
your spirit. Soul happy! You stare into the canopy. There’s an
unbreakable smile on your face. You laugh, roar and howl!