Remember that the purpose of this section is to develop stages and strategies for reading narratives for comprehension. This is a process that builds on itself. It is therefore important that you spend the necessary time on each stage; with practice you will be able to combine stages and strategies to maximize your comprehension of the text you are reading.

Stage I. Develop Cultural/Historical Framework

As you learned in the Introducción: Getting Started, the first step is to construct a cultural/historical framework, beginning here with the narratives you will read in this course. Building this structure for the first time will require intensive thought, planning, and work. As you continue your study of literature, however, you will update and expand, not re-create, the cultural/historical framework. For this reason, it is critical that the structure you create be flexible enough to accommodate new information. The more time you spend on this phase the first time, the less you will spend later.

Strategy 1. Create Graphic Organizer

A graphic organizer is any visual aid, such as the venn diagrams and charts you created earlier in this chapter, that helps you organize and document ideas and information so that you can make intelligent guesses and/or predictions about a text. It can take many forms, but above all it must be meaningful to you, and it must be open and flexible enough that you can add new information as you discover it.

The content of the graphic organizer will depend on what you are studying. In this case, you need a way to organize the cultural and historical information that is most relevant to the writers you will study in this course. For example, following page 427 of the main text, the authors have included a chronological index of historical events and the specific texts written in each genre around the time of those events. This graphic organizer provides an excellent model to follow (see Appendix for a blank chart), or you can create a different type. The structure can change and evolve as the course progresses and as you begin to study other genres.

Task 1. Create Graphic Organizer.

1.			Decide what kind of graphic organizer you are going to use--a chart, a time line, a chronological index--and create a broad, comprehensive overview of the centuries and genres of the selections you will be reading. Make sure to build your chart based on the selections that your instructor has selected for study in this course.

Strategy 2. Expand Background Knowledge

Think back on other classes you have taken that provided a historical or cultural perspective of Spain, Europe, or Latin America. You can expand your background knowledge by researching the music and art, or any other area of interest, of the epochs of the texts you are studying.

Task 1. Key Word Search.

2.			Look at the key words you listed in Task 2 of III. Panorama histórico. Use at least three of them within a broader category--for example, art and architecture--to do a computer search. Relate the words to the relevant writers and literature. Document the key words you use, the category you research, and a brief summary of the information you find.

Task 2. Personal Research. Find a personal source of information (a professor, instructor, local teacher, friend, graduate student, librarian) who is interested in Hispanic history and culture, the narrative genre, the writer you are studying, or a related topic. Try to expand your knowledge base by talking to that person about the topic(s) of your research. Document your discoveries here.

3.			With whom did you talk?
4.			What did you learn?
5.			What could you do to find out more about the topic?

Strategy 3. Use Textbook as Resource

Task 1. Transfer Information.

6.			Look at the information you documented from the Panorama histórico section. What pertinent information could you extract and transfer to the cultural/historical framework you created in Strategy 1?

Task 2. Scan for Key Words. Scan Vida y obra from the introduction to La camisa de Margarita on page 45 of the text, using the reading strategies you have been practicing. Note the key words and phrases. What additional information about Palma’s life can you add to your cultural/historical framework that could explain why he writes what he writes and the way he writes it?

7.			Key words:
8.			Additional information about Palma's life:

Task 3. Scan for Key Words.

9.			Scan El autor y su contexto on page 45-46 of the text. What was life like in Peru during Palma's life? How did it influence his writing? What did Palma contribute to the literary trends of his time?