10th Grade EnglishSubject Area Group

Introductions

Yin (left side):• Name• Site• Best book you read this summer

Find your partner: yin = left side of room; yang = right side of room. You must introduce each other according to your yin or yang partner.

Yang (right side):• Name• Site• Best movie you saw this summer

Common Core Literacy Standard: Reading Standard for Informational Text

Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

Author’s Purpose & Rhetorical Analysis

S Sender-Receiver Relationship

M Message

E Effect

L Logic

L Language

A Strategy for Rhetorical Analysis

 I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot County, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.

From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass

 

Sample Passage for Analysis

Sender Receiver Relationship:What is the sender-receiver relationship? Who are the images and language meant to attract? Describe the speaker of the text.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Sender Receiver Relationship:What is the sender-receiver relationship? Who are the images and language meant to attract? Describe the speaker of the text.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

The speaker, Frederick Douglass, was a former slave and abolitionist. His mostly likely audience is white northerners, in pre-Civil War America. The language is designed to be dramatic without being incendiary, thereby inspiring an audience that might be uneasy with more fiery rhetoric.

Message:What is the message? Summarize the statements made in the text.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Message:What is the message? Summarize the statements made in the text.

To show the connection between close reading and rhetorical analysis, ask students what FACT is uncertain for the speaker (Douglass). When they point out that he isn’t sure of his age, ask why that is significant. They should arrive, eventually, at the insight that knowing one’s birth date is a key aspect of identity, and withholding such basic information from a person is dehumanizing. In other words, the author’s PURPOSE is to expose the inhumanity of slavery.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Effect:What is the desired effect?

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Effect:What is the desired effect?

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Douglass intends to move the reader by his revelations. He wants the reader to join the Abolitionist movement.

Logic:What logic is operating? How does it (or its absence) affect the message? Consider the logic of the images as well as the words.Douglass begins with factual report (no knowledge of age), to generalization (most slaves do not know age), to indirect commentary (his master found his questions about his age “improper and impertinent”). In terms of images, note the analogy between slaves and horses, followed by the division of the year into work-oriented seasons (“planting-time, harvest-time…). Finally, note that the passage begins and ends with the same simple fact: Douglass is uncertain of his age.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Language:What does the language of the text describe? How does it affect the meaning and effectiveness of the writing? Consider the language of the images as well as the words.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

Language:What does the language of the text describe? How does it affect the meaning and effectiveness of the writing?

The understated tone makes the passage effective. The meaning is driven home by the simplicity of the central dilemma, stated first as fact (no “authentic record”), then as an emotion (“a source of unhappiness”), and ending as another statement of fact (“during 1835, I was about seventeen years old”). By burying the emotion, and emphasizing the voice of the slave-owner who denies his request, Douglass makes it clear that the request is reasonable and the response unreasonable.

Rhetorical Analysis of Sample Passage

AS English II Summer Reading @ M-A: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies Several stories relate the experience of recent immigrants from South Asia to the United States

Non-fiction connection: Bharati Mukherjee’s “Two Ways to Belong in

America” Long-term goal = students write

argumentative essay on assimilation

Connecting Fiction and Non-Fiction

Read and annotate “Two Ways to Belong in America”

Sample Text: Persuasive Essay

“This is a tale of two sisters from Calcutta, Mira and Bharati, who have lived in the United States for some 35 years…”

What is Mukherjee’s purpose in writing the essay?

What is the essential difference in the way the author and her sister have chosen to live in America?

How does Mukherjee use comparison/contrast to establish those differences?

Which position regarding assimilation does she support more strongly? How do you know?

What strategies make her argument convincing? How does it fall short?

Discuss with a Partner

Brainstorm topics related to a novel or play you plan to teach this year (i.e., Brave New World & bioethics; Macbeth & tyranny; The Grapes of Wrath & migrant labor).

Research possible non-fiction companions for the novel or play on one topic.

Consider how you can incorporate exploration of author’s purpose and rhetorical strategies with larger unit (i.e., to teach argumentative writing or to focus on close reading).

Finding Your Own Connections

Find colleagues who are teaching the same text or focusing on the same topic.

Share a non-fiction work you have found.Discuss ways you might incorporate the non-

fiction text(s) into a novel or play unit.Consider how you might implement the

“SMELL” strategy with the non-fiction text.Post ideas on a shared Google document

(today or later in the year).

Share Your Discoveries

Clarity: What is the Common Core standard regarding author’s purpose and rhetorical strategies?

Implementation: How can you use the SMELL strategy for rhetorical analysis?

Resources: Did you find some possible non-fiction texts to use in conjunction with a novel or play unit?

Please complete the exit ticket (for me) and the survey monkey (for the P.D. department) before you leave. Thank you!

Evaluation & Closure