So I finally got around to grading my senior IB students' first blind commentary last night. The students were extremely nervous propr to writing the commentary and I guess I should have been too. Imagine my shock when I discovered that my students wrote some of the following:
"the speaker paints you a picture"
"The passage from C.S. Lewis's Voyage to Venus is a chestfull of human emotions and fine literary descriptions."
"There is no telling who the character "Ransom" is, but he seems to be an innkeeper expecting our unknown protagonist. For now we will call our mystery main character 'Lewis'."
Lots of "I believe" or "It seems to me" or even "I think that...but I could be wrong."
And my favorite - the conclusion from one student's commentary (that was actually pretty decent up until this point):
"I must fast forward to my conclusion, and regret that I cannot continue. I see no meaning in this poem, no particular social issue it attacks nor a reason for its existence, besides the fun in writing such poems. That's fine though, that's the type of poem I prefer to read. It's a fun thing to read too. Other then that, there's nothing else to discuss."
Clearly, this is going to be a long year.
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