Tag: emulation through analysis

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AP Exam: Section II, Question 3 — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.

The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.

Section II, Question 3 — ETA Workshop

Argument: Students create an evidence-based argument that responds to a given topic.

You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.

For each prompt, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.

2018 Exam: Question 3 Prompt

The main reason for us to use this prompt as ETA practice is the abstract nature of the topic, which is “choosing the unknown.” The quotation in the prompt is difficult, too:

We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.

The first sentence must be unpacked carefully, and the second one introduces the concept of enrichment. You have only a few minutes to turn that quotation into a workable approach.

2018 Chief Reader Report (Question 3 Only)

The real difficulty of this sort of prompt is that you must be able to draw from a wide range of experiences, readings, logic, etc., to defend any position effectively. In other words, you need to know a little bit about a lot of things.

The concept of the “unknown” opens up the possibilities. That’s why the details found in the best essays are so wide-ranging:

In upper-half essays, students responded to Lindbergh’s quote by calling on the likes of JFK, Galileo, and a laundry list of other scientists, explorers, and astronauts, as well as musicians, and philosophers. However, students also wrote about experiences traveling abroad, sailing for 17 days with a team of their peers, participating in a Mock UN, meeting the love of their lives, and rope climbing for the first time—all of which demonstrated for them what happened when the unknown is explored.

This is what you want to emulate: a balance between history, philosophy, pop culture, and personal experience.

2018 Exam: Question 3 Scoring Guide

To see what that balance looks like, you should study the essay that earned a 9. The scoring commentary especially emphasizes the arrangement of the student’s response:

The seamless transitions from the scientific to the musical (Bach and Shostakovich) and ultimately to the literary (Thoreau) are offered with appropriate and convincing explanations and extensive development (e.g., “Bach … created his own era of music … by exploring the possibilities of a chamber orchestra. He, by exploring new territory in music, changed the face of string and orchestral music, employing elements of fugue and countermelody”).

You should emulate as much of this student’s arrangement as possible when writing on exam day. You may not be able to predict the ability to balance scientific evidence with musical evidence — creating an effective balance and showcasing the breadth of your knowledge — but you can strive for some balance.

2017 Exam: Question 3 Prompt

If 2018’s Question 3 is difficult, 2017 seems to turn that difficulty up to 11. (Ignore, for the purposes of this ETA workshop, how linear time works.) The prompt is to respond to “[Chris] Hedges’ argument that ;the most essential skill . . . is artifice.'” The first two sentences of the excerpt to which you must respond mention “political theater,” “consumer culture,” and “faux intimacy.”

This is worth an ETA focus, however, because the prompt only seems difficult. It is very much in your wheelhouse. The topic is how an “image-based culture” deals in distorted narratives and performative, artificial emotions. More interesting is that you’re responding to the idea of artifice as a skill — “the most essential skill,” according to the excerpt. As students, you are told constantly which skills are most important.

Which means the real difficulty of this prompt isn’t the language, nor the seemingly abstract concept, but the requirement that you draw from a wide range of experiences, readings, logic, etc., to defend your position. You need to know a little bit about a lot of things.

2017 Chief Reader Report (Question 3 Only)

To understand how this is assessed, look at the Chief Reader’s explanation:

This year’s prompt casts a wide net. Responses ranged from political and historical approaches to responses that focused on consumerism, materialism, and advertising. The prompt drew many students into political discussions, but some of the best essays took on consumer culture. Students explored the artifice they found in advertisements and in pop culture: they wrote about reality television, glorification of sports icons, and media coverage of pop celebrities. Many students drew evidence from their experiences living in a world dominated by social media, a world in which images were frequently presentations of self.

That “wide net” is a test by itself. In the next paragraph of the report, the College Board notes that “most students focused on standard definitions of artifice and leaned on unsurprising examples.” Remember Paul Graham? You want to find the surprising and interesting approach to your topic. You want to find the river.

You can still do well on Question 3 by addressing Hitler’s rise to power, recent American elections, and the novels you’ve read in school. Those are “unsurprising examples,” but they could support a serviceable position. What you want, though, is to search your experience for what this report calls “apt examples,” which really means specific and noteworthy examples. Knowing a bit about “Rousseau and Machiavelli and… Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” will help you. Knowing history, especially “specific details of… policies and decisions,” will help you.

2017 Exam: Question 3 Scoring Guide

You are looking at the selection of detail, then, in these student essays. The one scoring a 6 is adequate, and rewarded as adequate, but it leans on The Hunger Games. Again, there is no prohibition on popular fiction, popular television, famous historical moments, etc.; it may be better, however, to stretch your thinking beyond the “unsurprising examples.”

It’s worth linking directly to the essay that earned an 8:

Take careful note of how this essay uses more unexpected references to history alongside recent presidential elections. The how is what separates it, not just the surprising knowledge of Machiavelli. This is a student with a sense of how Machiavelli’s ideas have played out in contemporary politics.

2005 Exam: Question 3 Prompt

We’re reaching back to 2005 to use a different kind of argument prompt. You’re given a controversial claim (“[W]hatever money you’re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away”) from an article called “The Singer Solution to World Poverty.” You must then evaluate the pros and cons of that position before indicating, as part of your own argument, which is more persuasive.

The topic seems straightforward, but it requires you to navigate complex issues like human nature and politics. We will practice it because it is also easy to stray from the prompt — to forget to do exactly what the prompt asks you to do. You must evaluate Singer’s position, offering evidence in support of and against it.

2005 Section II Question 3 Scoring Commentary

Back in 2005, these materials were separated, so you won’t find the scoring rubric at the beginning of this document. That rubric (2005 Section II Question 3 Scoring Rubric) is identical to the current one for Question 3, however.

The most critical piece of information for our ETA purposes is this: “The task called upon students to flesh out the structure of Singer’s argument, especially its underlying assumptions.” All you are given in many of these argument prompts is an excerpt or summary of a position; in those cases, you must demonstrate your ability to think critically about what is assumed.

2005 Section II Question 3 Student Essays

Focus on the essays scored an 8. In almost any general argument, you can generate momentum by defining terms; in this case, the College Boards notes that “[p]articularly compelling is the essay’s questioning of the definitions of and distinctions between ‘luxury and necessity.'” This prompt requires you to make that distinction clear, but in most cases, you’ll be able to start your essay by setting parameters and defining terms. In 2017, it’s the definition of “artifice”; in 2018, it’s the definition of “the unknown.”

What you want to avoid is stylistic: Don’t write, “The definition of [x] is [y]”; instead, talk about the term in context. For this 2005 prompt, it’s the idea of drawing a line. Where should we make the distinction between luxury and necessity?

Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work

Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.

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AP Exam: Section II, Question 1 — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.

The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.

Section II, Question 1 — ETA Workshop

Synthesis: Students read several texts about a topic and create an argument that synthesizes at least three of the sources to support their thesis.

You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.

When studying on your own, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.

For the 2018 exam, however, you should look at both the essay earning an 8 and the essay earning a 6. The prompt is introduced below and given some context.

Note that for the purposes of this ETA workshop, we are only looking at the question from 2018.

2018 Exam: Question 1 Prompt

The main reason for us to consider Question 1 from the 2018 exam is the prompt’s topic: eminent domain. Here is what the Chief Reader Report has to say about it:

While the language was accessible, students seemed to lack familiarity with the topic, and many struggled. The struggles suggest many classes are not asking students to engage in subjects that are not within teenagers’ immediate concerns. As a result of this lack, many students merely repeated the provided information, not interrogating it or using it as a means to support their own claim.

In other words, this is not in your wheelhouse. Questions about public libraries, honor codes, and technology in schools — all topics on Question 1 in past years — are likely easier for you to write about. You start your reading of the sources already sure that you have outside information and understanding to use. Eminent domain, however, deals with property ownership, which is not, as the College Board says, “within teenagers’ immediate concerns.” Even the Question 1 Introduction is off-putting:

Eminent domain is the power governments have to acquire property from private owners for public use. The rationale behind eminent domain is that governments have greater legal authority over lands within their dominion than do private owners. Eminent domain has been instituted in one way or another throughout the world for hundreds of years.

Your job is to move quickly and completely past the need for the topic to be one of your “immediate concerns.” The sources will do some of that work for you, but in this case, you have to prove that you are imaginative and empathetic enough to see turn the topic of eminent domain into a workable prompt.

2018 Exam: Question 1 Scoring Guide

For this ETA work, you should start with the Chief Reader Report:

The reason why: You must separate what you know about synthesis writing in untimed essays, what you’ve been taught about document-based questions in other subjects, and what is required for this timed essay. When you have time for the writing process, you will almost always find the nuance in other voices and perspectives. In other subject areas, a document-based question will be scored with a different rubric — one that does not stress the same qualities that are stressed here.

In brief, you must be able to piece together a nuanced argument of your own from these sources. As the College Board puts it in that Chief Reader Report:

Students often do not recognize nuance within the provided sources. They need to see not only what the provided arguments claim, but the context in which these arguments were created…
Students tend to create their arguments within a binary, as if the responses to the issues are either all good or all bad. Students need to recognize that most contested issues are contested because there often is sound support for all sides of the issue.

In our course, you have read widely and practiced exactly this sort of critical thinking. It’s now a matter of pulling it together in 40 minutes. The time constraints are unfair, at least in a writing-outside-of-tests sense, but it is still more than possible to work with these sources. As the Overview in the Scoring Guide puts it:

To do well, students were expected to understand that they were, in essence, creating an argument using the supplied information, as well as knowledge that they already possessed. Students also needed to understand that, with sources arguing among one another, students did not have to accept each source as “correct,” but rather, they needed to evaluate the provided information based on their own knowledge and perceptions of the world.

Emphasis mine. You are a thoughtful, experienced human being; your perspective must be on equal footing with the sources that are talking with each other (or, as that overview says, “arguing among one another”).

As for the scored essays themselves: Pay careful attention to the use of the counterargument in the essay earning an 8 (“Additionally, the fourth paragraph presents a counterargument regarding the constitutionality of eminent domain and then offers an effective rebuttal”), and note that the essay earning a 6 is successful in using multiple sources in a paragraph (“the third paragraph provides an adequate explanation of “false promises” and uses sources B and D to sufficiently support the argument”).

Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work

Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.

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AP Exam: Section II, Question 2 — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.

The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.

Section II, Question 2 — ETA Workshop

Rhetorical analysis: Students read a non-fiction text and analyze how the writer’s language choices contribute to his or her purpose and intended meaning for the text.

You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.

Start by reading the prompt carefully. Read the passage, taking brief notes as you go. Compare those notes to the Overview, which will highlight critical elements of the passage, prompt, and the best responses.

Then, for each prompt, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.

The 2018 exam is introduced below. The preceding years are presented in a list.

2018 Exam: Question 2 Prompt

The College Board’s Overview identifies one of the chief reasons to apply an ETA reading to this prompt: “This year’s task differed from previous iterations in that it was significantly lengthier; however, its language was very accessible to students.” It’s a long piece, but if you know what you’re doing, that ends up helping you.

The most important reason to start with 2018, however, is this sentence in the Overview: “While elements of style certainly merit consideration, they are not the first ingredient on which rhetors focus when developing strategies to persuade audiences: Style is the third canon of rhetoric, not the first or even the second.”

You probably don’t know what “rhetor” means (it’s the person engaging in rhetoric, and the term used by the folks who write and score your AP exam) nor exactly what is meant by the “canon[s] of rhetoric.” It’s information you have learned in a different context, however, making this the best place to apply an ETA perspective.

You can look at what these graders mean by “canons of rhetoric” in any of a dozen places. I suggest this one, because it’s a little more straightforward; the best source for this sort of thing, however, is the Forest of Rhetoric at BYU. Regardless of the source, what matters on Question 2 is that you understand what graders are looking for you to do: consider the relationship between the writer/speaker and the audience; consider appeals to logic and ethos that could persuade that audience; consider what details are included (and which are excluded); and consider the arrangement of the piece as it relates to the audience. Style (e.g., repetition, parallelism, figurative language) should be considered after the big stuff, so to speak.

Here’s how the College Board summarizes all that in the 2018 Overview:

To understand these choices and how they work, a student must first consider the rhetor’s relationship to the audience, as well as how this relationship necessitates both what this specific rhetor should include in — and exclude from — the speech to this specific audience. Additionally, a student must consider how the rhetor arranges the speech for the particular audience in the specific circumstances of the speech.

Because of its length, this passage invites you to consider those first two canons before any stylistic strategies.

2018 Exam: Question 2 Scoring Guide

Now that you’ve read all that, here’s why 2018 is so instructive in terms of test prep: The highest-scoring essay provided by the College Board focuses on style, specifically parallelism and diction, more than those first two canons. That’s important. It’s possible to do well with strategies like anaphora, if you connect those strategies to the audience, rhetorical context, etc.

It’s also possible to do well despite errors, as the scoring commentary notes. The essay earning an 8 needs “a more complete opening paragraph and some more clearly defined paragraph breaks,” but its analysis is accurate and apt. When you deconstruct this one to emulate its effectiveness, you must focus on that.

Other Places for ETA Work

2017 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | Useful because, as the College Board notes, it “challenged students to think about how Luce managed her difficult task (of being asked to speak about problems with the press) with her audience of fellow journalists, the very people she would be criticizing.” The analysis has to grapple with audience and context specifically, as the essay earning an 8 does.

2016 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | This one, like the 2018 prompt, invites a greater focus on audience and arrangement over style. It’s also an example of how important the prompt itself is. Often, the prompt will give you necessary information about the context of the piece. In this case, as the College Board notes in their Overview, most of the necessary information is in the prompt. The only thing not given, in terms of context/audience/speaker, is “the laudatory nature of Thatcher’s work.”

2015 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | Again, the College Board designed this prompt to force students to look at rhetoric “not merely as words on the page but as words in action, words intended to have a social impact.” Even the use of “choices” (over “strategies” or “devices”) is meant to focus on “the primacy of authorial agency and communicative purpose.” This is what makes Question 2 more authentic than you thought: the attempt to connect you to real people persuading others in real contexts.

Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work

Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.

AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), Test Prep

Not to be confused with the workshop that focuses on completing a practice run at Section II:

AP Exam: Section II — Workshop

This ETA or emulation-through-analysis workshop invites analysis of the exemplary essays provided by the College Board. This workshop takes Step #5 from that post (“Read all of the resources for that question: sample essays, scoring explanations, grader reports, etc.”) and converts it into a standalone but repeatable exercise. It does not require that you write your own response, although that would certainly be permissible.

Question By Question

Question 2 — Rhetorical Analysis: Students read a non-fiction text and analyze how the writer’s language choices contribute to his or her purpose and intended meaning for the text.

AP Exam: Section II, Question 2 — ETA Workshop

Question 1 — Synthesis: Students read several texts about a topic and create an argument that synthesizes at least three of the sources to support their thesis.

AP Exam: Section II, Question 1 — ETA Workshop

Question 3 — Argument: Students create an evidence-based argument that responds to a given topic.

AP Exam: Section II, Question 3 — ETA Workshop

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English 11: Narrative Writing + Literary Analysis

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Start by reviewing our process for reading, analyzing, and sometimes emulating literature:

Literary Analysis Guide

On Narrative Writing

Through this post, you are studying and emulating narrative writing, which is a mode of discourse in which a sequence or series of events, real or fictional, is relayed or described. More simply, narrative writing tells a story.

For a piece of writing to be considered a complete narrative, it must fit these criteria, which it does through certain literary elements. Some of the basic elements of writing, like syntax and diction, are included in that protocol; everything else falls on a list you are given every year in your English classes. That’s why you’ll recognize everything in this article1:

Note: We are using that particular article for two reasons. First, if you read it, you’ll know everything you need to know to do this work. Second, it’s a site full of ads, which lets us use Snap and Read, one of the district’s most useful browser extensions, to eliminate distractions2. Whatever you use, make sure it covers the basics. You’ll need an internalized sense of them to analyze what you read.

Narrative ETA: Emulation Through Analysis

Below are short stories of varying length. After reading each story, run it through the protocol for works of literary merit. Write about each focus separately and completely, using the template provided below. Load it, make a copy in your Drive, and then complete it.

This template will be attached to any Google Classroom assignments, as well. The headings are repeated below for reference.

1⁰ Focus: How You Read
2⁰ Focus: What Literature Is For
3⁰ Focus: Emulation Through Analysis

Note: For that tertiary focus, we are adapting the directions from Part 3 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts, since it serves several purposes3.

Here is a downloadable and printable copy of all three stories, including the example text:

Example Text: “Widow’s First Year,” by Joyce Carol Oates

Note: You do not need to run this short story through the three responsive steps. Instead, it’s included to show you what all stories have. Even these seven words — just one more than Hemingway’s apocryphal story — create a story with a beginning, middle, and end. There are characters who experience conflict. That conflict resolves itself.

All stories obey these rules, or they break them deliberately. Keep that in mind as you read the two stories that comprise your assignment, and then use what you’ve learned here to craft your own story.

Here is Oates’ story in full:

Widow’s First Year

I kept myself alive.

Required Narrative #1: “Sticks,” by George Saunders

Click here for the story and a bit of background:

Required Narrative #2: “Give It Up!” by Franz Kafka

The second required story is quite short and strange. It will test your critical thinking and collaborative abilities to make sense of it.

“Give It Up!”

It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was walking to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized that it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me unsure of the way, I did not yet know my way very well in this town; luckily, a policeman was nearby, I ran up to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: “From me you want to know the way?” “Yes,” I said, “since I cannot find it myself.” “Give it up! Give it up,” he said, and turned away with a sudden jerk, like people who want to be alone with their laughter.

Emulation: Narrative Writing

The last step is to emulate one of the short stories presented here. Your own narrative can be true or fictional or a combination of both. It can be on any subject you choose. It must only demonstrate the same kind of authorial choices.

Create this emulation however you wish — by hand, through Google, on a typewriter, etc. — and then submit a copy of it as requested for GAP purposes. Additionally, you should strongly consider the extent to which your story might be shared with others. Refer to this post:

The End of the Writing Process

  1. Which is just one of many such documents available to you. The most cursory search on Google would give you hundreds more. ↩

  2. When you click to “[r]emove distractions,” that site goes from this:

    To this:

    This is not the only way to get a readable, reviewable source for literary devices, but it works extremely well with our technology. ↩

  3. The first is to give you another way to learn the necessary literary devices, since the full exam prompt offers a list of them. This is what it looks like:

    Closely read the text provided and write a well-developed, text-based response of two to three paragraphs. In your response, identify a central idea in the text and analyze how the author’s use of one literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device (characterization, conflict, denotation/connotation, metaphor, simile, irony, language use, point-of-view, setting, structure, symbolism, theme, tone, etc.) develops this central idea. Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis. Do not simply summarize the text.

    The second purpose is to practice succinct analysis. You are not required to write an essay of analysis on the ELA Regents Exam; instead, you must write only two or three paragraphs. Your focus is on identifying a main idea, identifying a literary device that develops that main idea, and analyzing examples of that literary device in the passage. ↩

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English 10: Narrative Writing + Literary Analysis

  By English 10 Regents (2018-2019)

The Point of a Story

In our course, you write what you read and read what you write. We call the process emulation through analysis, or ETA writing. It means that you pick apart a text because you want to emulate it, not because of a “mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of ‘understanding’ that can be dug out of a book.”

That quotation comes from John Holt and his essay, “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” which you studied as part of our introduction to literature and the reading process. Following that, you also received a three-part guide on how we read:

As You Read: Works of Literary Merit

Our goal, again, is to emulate the works we study. To get there, we must analyze them, being careful not to let that analysis break the magic.

This time, we are studying narrative writing: a mode of discourse in which a sequence or series of events, real or fictional, is relayed or described. More simply, narrative writing tells a story.

For a piece of writing to be considered a complete narrative, it must fit the criteria outlined above, which it does through certain literary elements. Some of the basic elements of writing, like syntax and diction, are included in that protocol; everything else falls on a list you are given every year in your English classes. That’s why you’ll recognize everything in this article1:

Note: We are using that particular article for two reasons. First, if you read it, you’ll know everything you need to know to do this work. Second, it’s a site full of ads, which lets us use Snap and Read, one of the district’s most useful browser extensions, to eliminate distractions. When you click to “[r]emove distractions,” that site goes from this:

To this:

Analyzing Narratives

After you’ve read the background above, you can move on to analyzing and emulating.

Below are short stories of increasing length. After reading each story, run it through the protocol for works of literary merit. Write about each focus separately and completely, using the template provided below. Load it, make a copy in your Drive, and then complete it.

This template will be attached to any Google Classroom assignments, as well. The headings are repeated below for reference.

1⁰ Focus: How You Read

Focus on what this work reveals about how you learn and how you read. Does the length of the text help? How? Did you print a copy of the texts, or did you read online? Why? What was the effect?

2⁰ Focus: What Literature Is For

Use the post and the ideas we gleaned from its central video to ask yourself what each text teaches you. Is it giving you wisdom and insight? Into what aspects of yourself or your world? When in doubt, remember the video’s final quotation:

We should learn to treat [literature] as doctors treat their medicine, something we prescribe in response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best suited to addressing. Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Often, this kind of analysis is pitched in terms of essential questions about human nature or society. For longer works of literary merit or nonfiction, those questions are usually provided in class.

3⁰ Focus: Emulation Through Analysis

The post on how to read covers diction, syntax, and other universal elements of writing. You can emulate those aspects in any writing response.

For this particular mode of discourse, and for each model text, you should also focus on literary devices. Characterization, conflict, foreshadowing, irony — all those and more can be analyzed and emulated. In fact, the best way to approach this sort of analysis is by adapting the directions from Part 3 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts:

Closely read the text provided and write a well-developed, text-based response of two to three paragraphs. In your response, identify a central idea in the text and analyze how the author’s use of one literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device (characterization, conflict, denotation/connotation, metaphor, simile, irony, language use, point-of-view, setting, structure, symbolism, theme, tone, etc.) develops this central idea. Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis. Do not simply summarize the text.

ETA Narrative #1: The Shortest Story

Author: Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

ETA Narrative #2: 50-Word Short Story

Author: Michael Lawrie

First Impressions

Beth: Socialist, vegan, Amnesty volunteer, and generally lovely girl. Her band wore the Swastika, SS badge, and the Totenkopf — so she did, too.

Walking home after a gig, she felt the blade slide in, cold then warm.

The police dismissed her as just another dead Nazi. Her killer was happy to have done his bit.

first_impressions (1)

This is the original, unedited version.

ETA Narrative #3: Short Fiction

Author: Stuart Dybek

Sunday at the Zoo

We decided to stop drinking and spend Sunday at the zoo. It was going nicely until she worked herself up over the observation that it was a horrible thing to cage the animals.

“That’s not very profound,” I said, “everybody who goes to the zoo feels that sometime.”

“Oh, you cruel ********2,” she screamed, “I’m not everybody!”

She bellied over the guardrail and flung herself against the bars of the wolves’ cage.
Three wolves had been circling and as soon as she touched the bars they froze, fur
bristling along their spines.

She had her arms stuck in between the bars up to her shoulders and as much of her face as she could wedge in yelling, “Eat me! Eat me!” to the wolves.

Just that week the newspapers had carried an account of how a small girl had an arm gnawed off – she’d reach in to pet them and one wolf held it while the other ate. It was, in fact, what had led us, along with the crowd, relentlessly to the wolves’ cage.

But the wolves held their ground, snarling, stiff-legged.

An attendant came running down the aisle between the fence and cages and grabbed her by the hair and throat, wrestling her back. She locked her arms around the bars and he kept
slapping her face with a thick, purplish slab of meat he must have been feeding to one of the animals. 

“I’ll give you, ‘Eat me, Eat me,’” he grinned, kicking her down.

At that instant all three wolves rushed against the bars so that they shook, and you could hear their teeth breaking on the metal. Their bloodied snouts jabbed through, snapping at air.

“Stop abusing that woman,” I shouted from the crowd.

Here is a PDF of the original story, with a second bit of flash-fiction attached: “Billy’s Girl,” by Gordon Jackson.

Emulation: Narrative Writing

The last step is to emulate one of the three short stories presented here. Your own narrative can be true or fictional or a combination of both. It can be on any subject you choose. It must only demonstrate the same kind of authorial choices.

Create this emulation however you wish — by hand, through Google, on a typewriter, etc. — and then submit a copy of it as requested for GAP purposes. Additionally, you should strongly consider the extent to which your story might be shared with others. Refer to this post:

The End of the Writing Process

  1. Which is just one of many such documents available to you. The most cursory search on Google would give you hundreds more. ↩

  2. This bit of profanity has been edited out, with sincerest apologies to Mr. Dybek’s original text. We have to tread lightly in a high school. There’s no . ↩

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As You Read: Works of Literary Merit

  By Reading Resources

Application

Use this while reading any work of literary merit as part of your makerspace learning. You can also use this protocol to replace an assigned text with a text of your own, when and if you are given permission to do so. The replacement must enable all three focuses outlined below.

Load a printable, two-side PDF of these criteria here:

The sources for all adapted materials are here, plus more on the reading process:

Continue reading

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Emulation-Through-Analysis Reading: Literature

  By Space Explainers

In a makerspace, the focus is on creating, so students read what they write and write what they read as often as possible. Emulation is at the heart of the creative process. For most students, that means essay-writing, with poetry and short fiction occasionally.

Most other literature, especially the novel, is difficult to emulate. It takes a lot of time and a particular passion, like the it did for the first Pareto Project highlighted in 2017-2018. It isn’t for everyone.

Instead, literature is the primary tool for building a better human being:

The Reading Process

The first section of that post pitches reading as a tool for understanding ourselves and our world. As the video, “What Is Literature For?” puts it:

We should learn to treat [literature] as doctors treat their medicine, something we prescribe in response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best suited to addressing. Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

So literature is the most effective tool in the Humanities. That doesn’t address literary analysis. When do we analyze the symbolism, leitmotifs, imagery, etc., of a work of literature? When do we write essays of literary analysis?

Well, as much as Paul Graham seems to be right about how that subtype of essay-writing is “three steps removed from real work,” he’s not right to call it pointless. All analysis has a point:

View at Medium.com

Comedians deconstruct jokes; musicians deconstruct songs; writers deconstruct writing. Literature is slightly different, because it can teach us how to write well, even if we’re not interested in writing novels ourselves. There’s a reason that Hunter S. Thompson copied literature to learn how to write. Good writing is good writing.

Probably no student should copy Fitzgerald’s fiction verbatim (Hunter S. Thompson was special), but we can apply an emulation-through-analysis lens to literature, just like we would to nonfiction essays.

Emulation Through Analysis (ETA)

We’re going to use a series of questions adapted from The Language of Composition, a textbook on college-level argument and rhetoric, to apply an emulation-through-analysis lens to literature. From Chapter 2:

When we talk about diction, we might look for interesting or powerful vocabulary, but we also consider figures of speech like metaphors, similes, personification, and hyperbole. When we consider syntax, we want to notice interesting constructions like parallelism, juxtaposition, and antithesis, along with sentence types such as compound, complex, periodic, cumulative, and imperative, among others. We also might look at the pacing of a piece of work: Does the writer reveal details quickly or slowly? How does he or she build suspense?

The bolded terms here probably are worth memorizing, because they are the easiest to vary in your own work.

Use the following questions to analyze diction:

  1. What type of words draw your attention? Do they tend to be a particular part of speech, such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, or adverbs? Is the language general and abstract or specific and concrete?
  2. Is the language formal, informal, colloquial, or slang?
  3. Are some words nonliteral or figurative, creating figures of speech such as metaphors?
  4. Are there words with strong connotations? Words with a particular emotional punch?

Use the following questions to analyze syntax:

  1. What is the order of the parts of a sentence? Is it the usual order (subject-verb-object), or is it inverted (object-subject-verb, or any other pattern that is out of the ordinary)?
  2. What are the sentences like? Are they periodic (moving toward something important at the end) or cumulative (beginning with an important idea and then adding details)?
  3. Are many of the sentences simple? Complex? Compound? Are the sentences on the long side, or are they short?
  4. How does the writer connect words, phrases, and clauses?

If you are able to load the original textbook chapter through Google Classroom, you’ll note that the fourth question in the second set (“Does the writer ask questions?”) has been dropped. It’s a good question for certain texts, but it doesn’t have universal usefulness across different modes of writing.

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ETA Essay: SOAPSTONE

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

Bishop Composition: SOAPSTONE

It’s time to return to your emulation-through-analysis essays. Skim the original post here, and then move into the updated SOAPSTONE assignment below.

Start by reading the following instructions, which are adapted from this blog post:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F12%2FSOAPStoneForAnalysis.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

The original College Board explanation is here, if you want another look at this. Your assignment is to use the embedded handout above to complete two analyses:

  1. Apply SOAPSTONE to the essay you have read in 100 Great Essays.
  2. Begin to brainstorm about your essay, using SOAPSTONE to outline.

You will also be given a copy of the following handout, which has a list of tones (often the hardest element to identify) on the back with abbreviated definitions:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F12%2FSOAPSTONEwithToneWords.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

A copy you can edit has been attached to the Google Classroom assignment. You will handwrite your responses before typing and submitting them.

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ETA Essay: Next Steps

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)
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The coffee is a crucial step.

At this point, you should have chosen an essay from the collection, One Hundred Great Essays, and gotten approval from your teachers to study that particular text. You should also have shared your choice through this Google Form and as part of a conversation on our Google+ Community. Before you move on, read through the comments on Google+. If you see a text that looks more interesting or engaging, you can still switch. After Friday, however, you really shouldn’t switch, because it will mean redoing a lot of work.

Bishop Composition: Step #1

Now you begin the emulation-through-analysis process. Over the next few days, you need to analyze your chosen text and begin drafting your own essay. That starts with what the collection itself provides, which comes in two parts:

  1. Before each essay is an overview of what the essay says and how it is written.
  2. After each essay is a set of questions about what the essay says and how it is written.

Here is an example of #1, from an essay called “Shooting an Elephant,” by George Orwell:

 

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

In this introduction, you are given much of what you would need to emulate Orwell’s writing:

  • “Orwell conveys his ambivalence…” | Your essay, too, could convey ambivalence. Click here for the definition.
  • “His language holds nothing back…” | You, too, could write that strongly about your subject.
  • “At the climactic moment of the essay, Orwell describes in harrowing detail…” | If you were writing a narrative like this, you could focus on “harrowing detail” at the climax. (Here is the definition of harrowing.)
  • “Orwell has so slowed the pace of the essay as to create a cinematic effect of slow motion…” | You, too, could slow down a single moment in your essay, attempting to emulate the way Orwell does it.

And so on. The introduction is essentially a rhetorical analysis of the essay, which means it is also a blueprint for emulation. Then you have the questions that come at the end:

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Depending on your chosen essay, these questions may or may not help. The last question is usually a prompt that you could use to emulate the author directly, so if you are feeling lost, use that question to get started. The other questions tend to ask you to look at particular choices the author makes, some of which you could emulate.

Your first assignment is to work your way through the introduction and concluding questions for your essay. We will review how to do this in class on Thursday, December 1; if you are absent, you will be able to sit with your teachers when you return to go over your essay and how these framing assignments help you analyze the text.

Bishop Composition: Step #2

The next part of the writing process requires you to work together and with your teachers to learn the analysis tool known as SOAPSTONE:

The Ultimate SOAPSTONE Analysis Guide for AP Exams

Ignore all the mentions of the AP exam. This is the best guide to SOAPSTONE analysis and planning that you will find. The original College Board explanation is here, and you should read it, as well. Then you can:

  1. Apply SOAPSTONE to the essay you have read. Write a paragraph or so for each element.
  2. Begin to brainstorm about your essay, using SOAPSTONE to outline. Again, you’ll write a paragraph or so for each element.

We will review how to do this in class on Friday, December 2, and again on Monday, December 5; if you are absent, you will be able to sit with your teachers when you return to go over SOAPSTONE and apply it to your own work.

Using Google+

We will take as much time as necessary for these two Bishop Composition steps. The initial plan is to use December 1, 2, and 5 to work in class. If your teacher is with another student, you should post questions either here, in the comment section of this post, or on Google+:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/117716758051277289443

Posting good questions creates evidence for grade abatement, as does answering questions effectively.