HookMap

Thesis

Hook: Hook: Purpose is to grab the Purpose is to grab the reader’s attention.reader’s attention.

• Facts• Scene• Description• Problem• Contrast• Background• Dramatic Event

MAP: MAP: Purpose is to lead Purpose is to lead the reader to your point by the reader to your point by

giving the background to the giving the background to the issue or back conversation that issue or back conversation that

compels the topic to be compels the topic to be discussed.discussed.

THESIS: THESIS: Purpose is to state Purpose is to state your claim or point to be proven.your claim or point to be proven.

What’s your point?

Introduction

The United States should remain an island of plenty in a sea of hunger. The future of mankind is at stake. We are not responsible for the rest of humanity. We should not accept responsibility for all humanity. We owe more to the hundreds of billions of homo futurans than we do to the hungry millions—soon to be billions—of our own generations.

Considered Mark Twain’s masterpiece and also one of the foremost pieces in American Literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is narrated by Huck Finn who fakes his own demise to get away from his appalling drunken father. Together with a runaway slave called Jim, Huck makes his way down the Mississippi on a raft. On the aimless journey, Huck and Jim become involved with a series of contrasting characters such as the fraudulent “Duke” and “Dauphin.” Like Tom Sawyer, it is an adventure novel, but together its disparate elements become a complex moral commentary on the “American Experience” as seen through the eyes of an innocent boy. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses dialect and symbolism as he leads his readers to see the need for a more human society and for better understanding of human relationships.

Considered Mark Twain’s masterpiece Considered Mark Twain’s masterpiece and also one of the foremost pieces in and also one of the foremost pieces in American Literature, American Literature, The Adventures of The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnHuckleberry Finn is narrated by Huck Finn who is narrated by Huck Finn who fakes his own demise to get away from his fakes his own demise to get away from his appalling drunken father. Together with a appalling drunken father. Together with a runaway slave called Jim, Huck makes his way runaway slave called Jim, Huck makes his way down the Mississippi on a raft.down the Mississippi on a raft. On the aimless journey, Huck and Jim become involved with a series of contrasting characters such as the fraudulent “Duke” and “Dauphin.” Like Tom Sawyer, it is an adventure novel, but together its disparate elements become a complex moral commentary on the “American Experience” as seen through the eyes of an innocent boy. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses dialect and symbolism as he leads his readers to see the need for a more human society and for better understanding of human relationships.

Facts and plot scene to hook readers’ interest in the story

Tells the reader why it is a worthy discussion and literary techniques and patterns of writing.

Main claim you are going to prove.

You can engage your readers’ interest with some background information. This approach works well when you know the audience is already interested in your topic and there is no reason not to come directly to the point. It is especially useful on exams where there is no need or time for subtlety.

With inflation taking its toll, many companies have understandably been forced to raise prices, and the oil industry should be no exception. But well-intentioned individuals begin wondering whether high prices are justified when increases occur as frequently as they do. It is at this point that we should start examining the pricing policies of the major American oil companies.

You can introduce using a definition (Keep in mind the lead “According to the dictionary…” is OVERUSED). This technique is useful for research papers or examinations where the meaning of a specific term is crucial.

Democracy is a form of government in which the ultimate authority is vested in an exercised by the people. This may be so in theory, but recent elections in our city have caused much concern for the future of democracy here. Extensive voting-machine irregularities and ghost voting have seriously jeopardized the people’s faith in the democratic process.

Begin with a story or anecdote that leads into or prepares for your claim.

Upon meeting the famous author James Joyce, a young student stammered, “May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?” “No!” said Joyce. “It did a lot of other things, too.” As this exchange shows, Joyce was an individual who valued humor. This tendency is also present in his final work, Finnegans Wake, where comedy is used to comment on the human condition.

What was it like to live through the holocaust? Elie Wiesel, in One Generation After, answers this question by presenting a series of accounts about individuals who found themselves thrust into Nazi death camps. As he does so, he challenges some of the assumptions we hold in our somewhat smug and highly materialistic society.

It is three times the number of people who belong to the Southern Baptist Convention, nine times the number who serve in the U.S. armed forces, and more than twice the number who voted for Barry Goldwater for President in 1964. What is it? It’s the number of people in the U.S. who admit to having smoked marijuana: a massive 62 million.

If it is well chosen, it can interest your audience in reading further.

“The rich are different,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald more than fifty years ago. Apparently, they remain so today. As any examination of the tax laws shows, the wealthy receive more benefits than do the middle class or the poor.

“The rich are different,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald more than fifty years ago. Apparently, they remain so today. As any examination of the tax laws shows, the wealthy receive more benefits than do the middle class or the poor.

“Eat two chocolate bars and call me in the morning,” says the psychiatrist to his patient. Such advice sounds like a sugar fanatic’s dream, but recent studies have indeed confirmed that chocolate positively affects depression and anxiety.

One of every seven women living in Smith County will be raped this year, according to a recent report prepared by the Country Rape Information and Counseling Services.

“I think onstage nudity is disgusting, shameful, and damaging to all things American,” says actress Shelley Winters. “But if I were twenty-two with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and progressive religious experience.”

A group of young women were questioning Saturday afternoon shoppers about their views on the 1982 defeat of the equal Rights Amendment. One old man in overalls answered, “ERA? Well, I like it just fine. But you know, I can’t pick it up on my darned old radio after dark.” That was the problem—too few people knew what the ERA really stood for.

With one eye blackened, one arm in a cast, and third-degree burns on both her legs, the pretty, blond two-year-old seeks corners of rooms, refuses to speak, and shakes violently at the sound of loud noises. Tammy is not the victim of a war or a natural disaster; rather, she is the helpless victim of her parent, one of the thousands of children who suffer daily from America’s hidden crime, child abuse.

Texas’s first execution of a woman in 22 years is scheduled for September 17 at Huntsville Unit of the State’s Department of Correction, despite the protests of various human rights groups around the country.

The Romans kept geese on their Capitol Hill to cackle alarm in the event of attack by night. Modern Americans, despite their technology, has hardly improved on that old system of protection. According to the Safety Council report, almost any door with standard locks can be opened easily with a credit card.

A two-hundred pound teenager quit school because no desk would hold her. A three-hundred pound chef who could no longer stand on his feet was fired. A three-hundred pound truck driver broke furniture in his friends’ houses. All these people are now living better, happier, thinner lives, thanks to the remarkable intestinal bypass surgery first developed in 1967.

I realized times were changing for women when I overheard my six-year-old nephew speaking to my sister, a prominent New York lawyer. As we left her elaborate, luxurious office one evening, Tommy looked up at his mother and queried, “Mommy, can little boys grow up to be lawyers, too?”

Some people believe that poetry is written only by aging beatniks or solemn, mournful men and women with suicidal tendencies. The Poetry in the Schools Program is working hard to correct that erroneous point of view.