The Basics

Part one of your final exam (and the part that will take the most time) is an essay response to a prompt. We are going to spend today, tomorrow, and most of Thursday discussing the processes of prompt response. As a precursor to these discussions and lessons, I would like you to spend some time reflecting on a few basic concepts.

Please complete the following tasks (in one comment with your name) before moving on.

1. What kinds of things will you notice in a text if it is persuasive or argumentative?
2. What is the first thing you do when you have to answer an essay question?
3. The following two prompts ask you to do VERY different things. The first prompt would ask you to INTERPRET and SUMMARIZE a text, and the second prompt would ask you to ANALYZE and EXPLAIN a text. Explain how these two tasks are different.
• After reading "To Build a Fire," explain what Jack London meant about the difference between instinct and knowledge.
• Jack London creates a sense of detachment from the characters in "To Build a Fire;" explain what he does as an author to create this detachment.

How do you respond to a prompt?

Please read the following prompt, and then, in a comment, answer the questions included. *You may want to copy and paste the comments into your comment and just answer them that way. YOU ARE NOT ANSWERING THE PROMPT, YOU ARE JUST READING IT AND THEN ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS.

Prompt: "In "Speech to the Council," Jane Smith is trying to convince her audience that animal testing is cruel. In a well developed essay that uses evidence from the text, discuss how Smith uses rhetorical strategies to convince her audience."

Questions:

1. What does the prompt want you to do when it says, "uses evidence from the text?"
2. What are rhetorical strategies?
3. Would it be okay to summarize the author's argument essay for the response to this prompt? Explain why or why not.
4. What would be a rough thesis statement for a response to this prompt. *Remember, a thesis for the response to this prompt; NOT a thesis for an argument against animal testing. :-)

Vocabulary

In a comment, please write YOUR OWN definitions for the following words. Please do not use dictionary.com (or any other dictionary for that matter), and do not use your notes. I know that some of you may not know all of these words by heart, and that's okay; I just want to know what you know so far.

1. Rhetoric
2. Rhetorical question
3. Parallelism
4. Ethos
5. Pathos
6. Logos
7. Repetition
8. Allusion
9. Diction
10. Persuade