The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - a Reading Project

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a semi-autobiography and an award-winning bestseller by Sherman Alexie. The book is about a Native American teenager and deals with topics such as alcoholism, poverty, violence, bullying, sexuality, death and much more. It's humorous and sad, but also insightful and easy to relate to. It brings laughter as well as tears. Enjoy!

A reading project

The focus the rest of the semester will be the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. In this project you will both listen to and read the book online, answer questions in a reading log, have discussions and write a text in exam.net. Make sure you put work into your reading log and try to prepare for the oral and written assignments.

You can find the online text here, where it is also possible to listen to the novel being read by Sherman Alexie himself.

You can also find a study guide with chapter summaries here. If you want to listen to the chapter summaries, I can recommend the add-on (tillägg) "click2speech" in Google Chrome.

Here you can find a wordlist in glosor.eu. Study words every week. Choose words that you do not know/do not know how to spell. It is also important that you look words up as you read.

Help: You can use an English-Swedish dictionary or an English-English dictionary.

Why read this novel?

- To improve reading and listening comprehension.

- To improve the ability to speak and write.

- To give you a deeper understanding of what life could be like in the USA and to improve the ability to reflect on culture in areas where English is used.

Assessment

- Reading log

- Discussions

Study Plan

The study plan shows the work that you have to complete every week, both in class and for homework. There is a basic course and a more advanced course, having to do with how many chapters you must read/listen to and how many reading logs you must write. It is a good idea to read the chapter summaries (see link above) of chapters that you do not read if you are taking the basic course. 

Week 13: Chapters 1-5

Week 14: Chapters 6-10

Week 15: Chapters 11-15

Week 17: Writing assignment in exam.net. You can prepare, but you will not be able to copy/paste or have notes when you are writing.

Assignment: 

- Imagine that you are Junior or Rowdy. You are very upset about your life on the rez. You write a Letter to the Editor, which will be published in The Pacific Northwest Inlander, a local newspaper in Spokane. You protest about the way you are being treated on the rez. Choose two things that you dislike and suggest improvement.
- Write 200-400 words.

(Week 18: Tests, reading and listening comprehension. Not the book.)

Week 19: Chapters 16-20

Week 20: Chapters 21-25. 

Week 21: Chapters 21-25./Speaking in small groups (old national exam, not the book).

Week 22: Chapters 26-30./Speaking in small groups (old national exam, not the book).

Uppgifter

Reading Log True Diary

Reading log True Diary BASIC.docx

Reading log True Diary ADVANCED.docx