DAY 3: Preparing for quote quizzes

Today, we did two things: first, we double checked our character maps, and then we created mini-quizzes, containing easy, medium and hard quotes. To see all of the quotes that students wrote on the board, click here.

We noted that easy quotes are those which have plenty of context clues so that people who have done a basic, quick read of the book should be able to put together the clues offered to draw a conclusion about who is speaking and under what circucmstances. Hard quotes are those which require a more in-depth, nuanced knowledge of the story and a keen eye for language. Medium quotes are those which fall somewhere in between.

Regardless of whether a quote is easy or hard to decipher, all quotes for a quote quiz should relate to something essential about the character and/or the plot, and the best way to study for a quote quiz is as follows:

1. Make sure you understand the relationships, motivations, actions and emotional states of characters. For example, in our character maps, many of us identified how people related to one another by drawing connecting lines between names. It is important to go beyond that and to write words that explain the connection. For example:
   
2. Once you have the connections explaining how and why people behave as they do, it is easier to determine essential quotations. For example, just knowing the above makes it easier to determine the source of this quotation: "'I'm a Bonapartist, too, and I have only one thing to say to you: I'm going to kill you. From this moment I declare a vendetta against you. The next time we meet, it will mean that your last hour has come'" (186).
   
3. When you go to the book to study, you should be asking questions, not memorizing quotes. Specifically:

What is the essence of the character?

Why does the character behave as he or she does?

What are the major actions this character undertakes?

What quotes reflect this?

By approaching the book in this manner, you should be able to identify those quotes most likely to be used in a testing situation, and to explain why they are signficant in explaining character, plot or theme.

Be sure to check out the end of the DAY 2 post for tips about questions to ask yourself when seeing a quote you can't quite place!