Least Tern > Shakespeare Study

Shakespeare e-Texts

Uses and Sights

from John McIlvain


E-texts are useful in a laptop program although they are not substitute for a good annotated edition. Some e-texts for individual plays have hyperlinks to notes and these can be helpful to students.


Use - A valuable way to use etexts in the classroom is to have students use Microsoft Word to annotate or comment upon a scene or individual passages. It is helpful if the e-text original has line numbers (see below). The scene or passage can be copied and pasted into a Microsoft Word document and the student can then use the comment feature from the Insert menu (Insert - Comment). Students can exchange the documents and comment on the comments as well. Comments can range from queries (What does this mean?) to assertions (This means…) to observation, each provided in a different color. Such an exercise is an excellent preliminary step to a “close reading” essay. The comment feature can also be used during class discussion and thus provide an excellent source for review.

Sights -

 

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