I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read the Language of Composition

Origin unknown (at least, unfound through a brief Google search).

Update, October. 18: I'm giving y'all the corrections/exemplars guide for the Prose ETA questions. The normal assignment protocol — complete the work, bank check your answers, revise — may non exist the almost constructive approach, and the stated purpose of this week's lessons is to put you in accuse of learning. You'll find the "answer" fundamental attached to your Google Classroom assignment, and I'll stack printed copies on the bookshelf by our textbook.

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Emulation through Analysis

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The post-obit is a version of this document. It has been reformatted for the website.

Overview of the Concept

In 1946, George Orwell noted that

an effect tin can go a crusade, reinforcing the original crusade and producing the same issue in an intensified class, then on indefinitely. A man may take to drinkable because he feels himself to exist a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the aforementioned thing that is happening to the English linguistic communication. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our linguistic communication makes it easier for united states to have foolish thoughts.

Later, he summarizes this idea: "Only if thought corrupts linguistic communication, language can besides decadent thought." Our work isn't then negative, though. Nosotros are focused on a feedback loop that builds strength in thinking through forcefulness in writing. We mind to Orwell but invoke Neil Postman:

Writing makes information technology possible and convenient to subject thought to a continuous and concentrated scrutiny. Writing freezes speech and in and so doing gives birth to the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian, the scientist — all those who must hold language before them so that they tin can meet what it means, where it errs, and where it is leading.

In here, we also pay attention to Paul Graham and his theory that essay-writing in school focuses on literary analysis through "a series of historical accidents," with the end result that virtually school essays are "now three steps removed from real work." Even non-literary assignments lose actuality in the pursuit of academic emulation.

The path forward has you read what you write and write what y'all read. Yous must understand how an author writes in order to emulate her, not to produce the sort of analysis that a brief search of Google would reveal. Information technology's the departure between applied and theoretical science.

And so nosotros arrive at emulation-through-assay (ETA) work, which is designed to teach you how to answer analytical questions while yous respond them. You should ascertain new terms, look upward new concepts, and enlist peers to help you. Getting the correct respond is a goal; understanding how to employ the strategy or technique is the goal. And the substructure is comprised, as e'er, of the universal skills of grade abatement, especially the iii that well-nigh often lead to external artifacts:

Because yous must know how to create in social club to create. A makerspace requires granular expertise before experimentation and iteration will yield results. Otherwise, information technology'due south just a sandbox.

Meanwhile, continue another thought from Orwell in heed:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least 4 questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will limited it? What epitome or idiom will make it clearer? Is this paradigm fresh plenty to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

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The following ten questions deconstruct elements of an essay by Francine Prose. Copies are available in the classroom. Focus your response process on speed, clarity, and insight.Ask questions about the ETA process or these questions in particular in the comments.

ETA Practice: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read"

1. Discuss 3 appeals to ethos in this essay. What dissimilar roles, or personae, does Prose use to establish her ethos?
2. Prose's opening paragraph includes such words as appalled, dismal, and dreariness – all with negative connotations. Why does she beginning out with such potent linguistic communication? Does she risk putting off readers who do not share her views? Why or why not? What other examples of strongly emotional language do you find in the essay?
3. Prose makes several fundamental assumptions nigh the part and impact of reading literary works in high school. What are they?
4. What appeals does she make to logos?
5. Prose cites many unlike novels and plays. Does she assume her audience is familiar with some of them? All of them? Explicate why it matters whether the audience knows the works.
6. According to Prose, "To hold upwardly [I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings] as a image of memoir, of thought – of literature – is akin to inviting doctors bedevilled of malpractice to instruct our medical students" (para. 13). Do you lot agree with this analogy? Explain your respond. What other examples of figurative language can you observe in this essay?
7. Toward the end of the essay (paras. 35, 39, and 43), Prose uses a series of rhetorical questions. What is her purpose in piling one rhetorical question on superlative of the other?
8. Would Prose have strengthened her argument by including interviews with a few high school students or teachers? Why or why non?
9. According to Prose, why are American loftier schoolhouse students learning to loathe literature? Try to find at least four or five reasons.
10. Does she propose a solution or recommendations to alter this situation? If she does non offer a solution, is her argument weakened? Explicate your answer.

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The side by side two sections offering you more context for this assignment. Read both carefully.

Organization ⟹ Autodidacticism

These questions are an unusual examination, in that they don't exam knowledge you lot've learned. They teachthat noesis through process of answering each question. You're going to have to look up terms, define concepts, and interact. To be most effective, though, you should start with an inventory of the resource available to you in and out of the classroom.

Google, as always, is your friend. And similar some friends, Google doesn't always know what it doesn't know — information technology simply acts like it has an answer. Certainly you lot could acquire a lot by searching Google and Wikipedia. I will advise, even so, that there are ii compelling reasons to utilise a textbook, instead:

1. The information has been vetted by an skilful.
2. The information is organized and indexed.

In that location is an old textbook for this class. We have 32 copies of it sitting on the bookshelf in the corner of the room. It's called The Language of Composition, and i of my favorite facts about it is that it was written in part past a former Brewster teacher, Larry Scanlon.

The opening chapters of the textbook walk yous through the three appeals that are mentioned several times in these ETA questions. Whether you are versed in these Aristotelian appeals or not, the textbook is an first-class review. You'll besides glean a dozen more helpful strategies and techniques through those starting time few capacity.

You accept probably guessed by now that this side by side week is as much about proving that y'all can utilise the resource of a space like ours to acquire as information technology is virtually deconstructing and emulating Prose. Before we tin get-go writing earnestly and frequently, you need a foundation. For some of y'all, it volition be review; for others, it will be a crash class. Remember that I am hither to assist.

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Postscript: Occam's Razor

Good. You've gotten through this post, and with some luck, y'all experience a little more clarity than you did xxx minutes ago. You take ane more exam this week:

Eleven perspectives on Sisyphean High

Read that. I will read it, besides, in order to update any sections that demand updating. Then we'll come together in mutual agreement — or we won't, and I will know who hasn't read by the way your ignorance undermines your choices and interactions over the side by side week.

Understand that the greatest strength of this course is its 100% transparency: If you desire to know what to do and how it all works, you only demand to read. When I direct y'all toward something specific to read, that should be an immediate priority. We larn by doing in here, merely the explanatory and instructional posts are a prerequisite; trying to create something meaningful without that background would be like trying to utilize power tools without whatever safe precautions. You're going to lose a limb.

On the subject of losing limbs: If I'm not convinced by the stop of the get-go-quarter that you belong in this AP grade, then you don't belong in this AP class. Does that mean you'll be kicked out? No, of course not. Merely you should emerge from a close reading of that "Occam'southward Razor" essay with an understanding of what information technologydoes mean.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read the Language of Composition

Source: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=193

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