38 Don’t Tell Me to Despair about the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect
38 Don’t Tell Me to Despair about the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the reading process to “Don’t Tell Me to Despair about the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect.”
- Summarize the article.
- Respond to the article.
- Connect the ideas in the article to your personal experience.
Preview the Article
Follow the steps below to preview the article “Don’t Tell Me to Despair about the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect.” Ideally, you should print the article and write your responses in the margins of the printed copy. To read more about previewing, visit the chapter on previewing a reading.
- Read the title. What does it make you think about? What do you think the article is about? What questions do you have? Record your predictions and questions on the printed copy of the article next to the title.
- The title mentions a feeling of “despair” about the climate. How do you feel about the global environmental crisis? Record your thoughts on the printed copy of the article.
- Read the first paragraph. What additional predictions do you now have about the article? What additional questions do you have? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- As you scan the article, you will notice that it has no headings. Read the first sentence of each paragraph. What additional thoughts or questions do these sentences raise? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the bolded and underlined vocabulary in the article. If there are any words that you do not know well, look them up in a print or online dictionary and write some notes about their meanings on the printed copy of the article. Keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings. You may need to read the sentence containing the word to understand the word’s usage. When reading, make note of idioms, which are phrases whose meaning is often figurative or unconnected to the words. For example, when someone says, “It’s raining cats and dogs,” they mean that it is raining heavily. If you have not encountered an idiom previously, you may be confused. Morgan Florsheim uses the idiom sow seeds in paragraph 5. Sometimes, you will find idioms in the dictionary but not always. You may need to conduct a Google search.
- Based on your preview of the article, what do you think is the central point of the article? (Don’t worry if you are not sure. This is a prediction or guess – you do not have to be correct as long as you are engaging your brain.) Record your prediction on the printed copy of the article.
- Based on your preview, do you predict that the article is narrative, expository, or argumentative?
Read Interactively
Now, read the article using the guidelines from the chapter on reading interactively. As you read, follow these steps to engage with the text.
- Pause to confirm or revise your predictions and to answer the questions you posed while previewing the article. Write down those revised predictions and responses to the questions as you read.