I feel that I am getting better at communicating with the text by asking questions and commenting on key parts.

1.) Surrounding context: Yo-Yo Ma wrote this essay. In his bio I noticed that he is extremely decorated, with loads of experience in the music industry, with awards to show for it. I also noticed that he went to an Ivy league school, Harvard, which gives him even more credibility. This essay was published in January 2014 on the World Post.

2.)Circumstantial context: The circumstances for reading this text is because it is for an assignment. The purpose for reading the text is to see Ma’s argument in how art needs to be incorporated into different fields, in order for people to grasp layers/more knowledge. He’s trying to portray that with more art, we can incorporate dual, efficient, and more out of the box thinking leading to innovation.

3.)Intentional context: Yo-Yo Ma’s intentions are to show how art can enable empathy, allow us to find meaning and living, and allow merging of fields that can inspire more critical thinking. He mainly wants to show the positives of arts and show that it should be apart of the STEM program, creating STEAM.

Glossing:

bandwidth: “the energy or mental capacity required to deal with a situation.”(Oxford dictionary)

lemmings: a small rodent(Wikipedia)

parentage: “the origin of something”(Oxford dictionary)