Ebook Express Yourself (writing skills for high school)

Yourself W R I T I N G S K I L L S F O R H I G H S C H O O L Edith N. Wagner N E W Y O R K Copyright © 2002 LearningExpress, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by LearningExpress, LLC, New York. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Wagner, Edith N. Express yourself : writing skills for high school / by Edith Wagner. p. cm. ISBN 1-57685-403-5 (alk. paper) 1. Language arts (Secondary) 2. English language—Composition and exercises. I. Title. LB1631 .W23 2002 808`.042`0712—dc21 2001050445 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition ISBN 1-57685-403-5 For more information or to place an order, contact LearningExpress at: 900 Broadway Suite 604 New York, NY 10003 Or visit us at: www.learnatest.com Contents Introduction iv How to Use this Book v Section 1:Writing for Information and Understanding 1 Chapter One: The Test Question 3 Chapter Two: The Term Paper Assignment 19 Chapter Three: Everyday Writing 27 Section 2:Writing to Persuade 33 Chapter Four: Thesis Statements and Effective Research 35 Chapter Five: Writing for Persuasive Speaking 53 Chapter Six: Persuasion in Everyday Writing 63 Section 3:Writing to Narrate 71 Chapter Seven: Narratives for Personal Experience 75 Chapter Eight: Narratives for Academic Purposes 85 Chapter Nine: Narratives in Everyday Life 91 Section 4:Writing in Response to Literature 97 Chapter Ten: Writing About Poetry 99 Chapter Eleven: Writing About Prose (Fiction) 113 Chapter Twelve: Writing About Drama 127 Appendix A: Tips for Peer Review 135 Appendix B:Answers and Explanations 141 Introduction Human beings communicate in four ways. We listen, speak, read, and write. When you were a baby the first thing you did was listen to the world around you. You recognized voices; you were startled by noises; you were soothed by music. Then you began to imitate the sounds you heard and you experimented by creating your own sounds.You learned that crying brought attention,words identified things,and that linking words together made meaning. Then you learned that symbols on a page held unique meaning, and you learned to read. The last of the four ways you learned to communicate was through writing, and the very formal trans-ference of words to paper was probably initiated in school, as early as kindergarten. Now, as adults, even though you can say with confidence that you know “how” to listen, speak, read, and write, you also know that simply knowing how doesn’t mean you always do any one of the four com-munication strands well. Have you ever “listened”to a lecture and not been able to remember one thing you heard? Have you ever “read”a page or two and had to read it all over again because you didn’t concentrate? Have you ever “spoken” and then had to explain something twice because you weren’t clear the first time? Have you ever “written” an exam or a paper or even a note, to find you needed some serious help making yourself understood? If you were ever in any of these situations, you were not alone. Effective communication requires skill—just like mastering a sport, playing an instrument, dancing, cooking,or woodcarving.Communicating well demands that you learn the rules and practice a lot.Now there are many folks out there who get along just fine with basic communication skills, and this book is not for them.This book is for those who want to become more effective at communicating their thoughts and ideas, specifically as writers. Unlike listening, speaking, and reading, writing is the way we make our thinking visible to the world. Without committing our ideas to paper, our thinking remains invisible, locked in our heads. This is proba-bly a good thing if we are confused or without information. Who would want to put a foolish, illogical, mis-informed mind on display for the public? But in today’s world of high stakes testing, writing has become the one tried and true measure of your thinking,and everyone wants to see it.So,if you try to avoid writing,this book is dedicated to you. iv EXPRESS YOURSELF INTRODUCTION How to Use This Book “High stakes testing” is a phrase that has been captured in the newspapers and has students, parents, and teachers very concerned. Simply defined, high stakes tests are those that have very serious consequences. For example, you are likely to discover that you cannot earn a high school diploma in your state unless you pass certain exit exams.Without that high school diploma,the doors to higher education are locked;entry to cer-tain employment is closed; a career in the military might be impossible. What ties high stakes testing to this book is that all of the tests require you to demonstrate your learning by writing what you know in complete sentences.In doing so,you provide a logical pattern of organization that follows the conventions of standard written English.The days of the multiple-choice tests are gone.Testing now wants you to show not just what you may know but howyou know it and how you can applyyour knowledge and information.In short,today’s tests demand that you write. This book is organized around the four major purposes for writing which drive most of the instruc-tion and all of the testing that you experience in high school and college. The four purposes are: WRITING TO DEMONSTRATE INFORMATION AND UNDERSTANDING This type of writing is also called expository writing and it takes the form of your content area term papers and essays.It’s where you select information and organize it to show that you understand it.An example would be the social studies essay that asks you to explain the economic, social, and political causes of the Civil War. WRITING TO PERSUADE This type of writing requires that you use information to argue a point and prove it. This kind of writing is often called writing for critical analysis because you are asked not only to select appropriate information but also to use that information to prove a point of view. For example, instead of just explaining the causes of the Civil War, you might be asked to persuade your reader that the Civil War was more about the econom-ics of the southern plantation system than it was about the social issue of slavery. WRITING TO NARRATE A STORY OR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE This type of writing requires that you tell a story in order to demonstrate information, knowledge, or per-sonal experience. The same social studies essay would require that you create a series of journal entries writ-ten as a plantation owner in 1859 Georgia to demonstrate the social and economic realities of the plantation system, or to construct a chronological narrative of a day in the life of a Confederate soldier. HOW TO USE THIS BOOK EXPRESS YOURSELF v ... - tailieumienphi.vn