Nonfiction – Reading UnitIntroduction
Essay: A nonfiction, shorter work that is NOT poetry or verse.
Good Readers = Good Writers
We learn new vocabulary
We learn what we like and what we don’t like
Reading for pleasure NEEDS to be part of our lives: Start thinking about what you want to read for pleasure…
“Learning to Read and Write: Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie
Author’s Purpose:
Reading opens doors
Author’s techniques
Motif – A reoccurring image, subject metaphor, or theme in a work: Heroes
Metaphor – A comparison saying one thing is another: “A paragraph was a fence with words.”
Anaphora – Repetition of the first word or words in a series of sentences or phrases: “I read…I read…I read…” paragraph 6
Juxtaposition – 2 opposite ideas NEXT to each other for comparison: “They” (paragraph 5) versus “I” (paragraph 6)
“Listening” – Eudora Welty
Voice: Author’s style, the quality that makes his or her writing unique, and which conveys the author’s attitude, personality, character.
Sensory Images: Images created in your head from a very detailed description of something, often using more than one of the five senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing).
“Listening” – Eudora Welty
“The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth.”
As readers we have to LISTEN for what works and what does not. Be aware of a writer’s voice and your own voice in writing. How a piece of writing sounds is as important as what it says. Can we believe it, trust it, be engaged with it?
Welty, Eudora. “Listening.” in Cohen, Samuel, ed. 50 Essays: A portable Anthology. 2nd ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007.
SIGHT: “In ‘Once Upon a Time,’ an ‘O’ had a rabbit running it as a treadmill, his feet upon the flowers” (Welty 440).
SMELL: “…the cup of the yellow daffodils gave off whiffs just alike” (440).
TOUCH: “…their weight and with their possession in their arms, captured and carried off to myself” (437).
TASTE: “It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole, in Ohio” (441).
HEAR: “Her voice came out just a little bit in the minor key” (441).
Frederick Douglass “Learning to Read and Write”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su-4JBEIhXY
Using Douglass to Understand Main Idea & Details of a Paragraph.
Introductory info on how he started to learn to read and write
Learned to read and write
Mistress instructed him
Stopped teaching him when husband said she couldn’t teach a slave
Learned to treat slaves like “brutes” even though she “lacked depravity” – she was kind
Douglass – paragraph 2
Provide further details about Mistress Hugh: slavery hurt her as much as him
Mistress was kind & tender-hearted
Took away her good qualities
Stopped teaching him
Learned education and slavery were incompatible