I believe I’ve figured out a process this morning that I can use to perform close reading tasks that should be sufficient.

I believe I’ve figured out a process this morning that I can use to perform close reading tasks that should be sufficient.

I roughly documented in 3 mins the steps that go from a PDF to text, from text to sentences, from sentences to Excel, and then a hidden feature in Excel that allows you to “Speak Text on Enter”.

I don’t know how well it compares to colored highlighting and margin notes but
– the columns should be sufficient room,
– the individual sentences allow for sufficient focus,
– and it allows an ergonomic text to speech process that is far less ‘clunky’ than normal “left to right/ top to bottom” narration style.

It loses the paragraph breaks but I noticed in close reading it appears to be a little more sentence-based than paragraph based in granularity. I could be wrong but these are my best guesses.

Whether I’ll be able to roll these up into themes is something I’ll tackle when I do more. I’m hoping the text will “self-reveal” its themes via repeated keywords and concept families, which I _think_ is the promise of close reading ?

If nothing else, it’s certainly experiential learning. Thank you for your time and hopefully this modified process mirrors sufficiently and attains similar benefits.

[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]

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