Essays, Essays, Essays

Today we focused on ways to improve your essay writing.
Overall, I was pleased with the class results on the Zippy essays. The class average on the In Cold Blood analysis was a 5. The class average on the Dahir commentary analysis was a 5. Considering the Zippy analysis class average was 5.75 (and some change), that's a considerable jump. I'm very pleased with the overall progress of the class.

Suggestions for continued improvement:
1. Intro paragraph should include (not necessarily in this order):
a. Author’s name
b. Title (Underline book titles, essay titles in quotations)
c. Identification of the effectiveness of the author’s writing in relation to the prompt
d. A mention of tone
e. A mention of the author’s purpose in relation to the prompt
f. A mention/allusion to the audience
g. Specific rhetorical strategies
h. An interesting hook. This isn’t a five minute quick-write, so you have time to use rhetorical strategies yourself.


Example:
     Typically, children are taught their parents’ beliefs; what happens when those two parents have conflicting ideas about religion? Haven Kimmel successfully illustrates on such situation, addressing the audience of A Girl Named Zippy with tones of sarcasm, humor and confusion to convey her childhood’s conflicting religious views. With the utilization of devices such as contrast, diction, paradox and tone, Kimmel provides a variety of anecdotes that reveal the influence of her mother and her father on her beliefs. Starting with a comparison of each parents’ views, Kimmel develops their roles via her relationship with them at different points throughout her childhood. (Sam Kiblinger)


2. When you analyze a rhetorical strategy you should:
a. Explain the purpose of that specific strategy
b. Cite the specific example
c. Analyze its effectiveness


3. Some other considerations:
a. Many of you failed to explain WHY Zippy was so drawn to her father’s religious beliefs rather than her mothers. Showing this in your analysis was essential to earning a higher grade.
b. When you analyze a rhetorical strategy you should explain the purpose of the strategy. Why would an author want to appeal to pathos? Why is hyperbole effective? Too many of you wrote “Here, the author uses hyperbole.” You need to explain why the author uses hyperbole, not just state the fact that she uses it!


THIS IS WHAT A 9 LOOKS LIKE:
Sam’s second paragraph:
     Kimmel portrays her father’s beliefs quite blatantly, and with some humor, at the beginning of the memoir: “Everyone in Mooreland believed in God (except my Dad)” (p. 4). Her attitude toward this would likely be less positive were it not for the vast admiration she held for her daddy: “He was what it meant to be a father and a man in 1971.” As a contrast, she also reveals her mother’s strong faith, including her reaction to Zippy’s babyhood silence in “Baby Book”: “I have turned her life over to God, to do with as he sees fit.” This strong contrast between the beliefs of her parents sets the stage for a while lifetime of religious confusion and effectively clues-in the reader as to why she cannot just choose one religious lifestyle and stick with it.