The rhetorical analysis paragraph can be a stand-alone effort or it can be taught in conjunction with the rhetorical analysis thesis statement--whichever works. Bottom line, either skill will help students develop their skill for FRQ 1.
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Standards
4A. Develop a paragraph that includes a claim and evidence supporting that claim. |
Students need to understand the relationship between the thesis and topic sentences, and one way to explain it is to show that the topic sentence is really a mini-thesis: a thesis for just one paragraph of your essay. Like a thesis, it needs some crucial parts, especially if it's acting as a stand-alone paragraph rather than as one component of a larger essay.
Stand-Alone Paragraph Topic Sentence Template
Topic Sentence Template for an Essay Body Paragraph
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Following your topic sentence, you'll need 1-2 sentences of context to establish some fundamental ideas BEFORE you leap into the evidence. The fundamental ideas you need to express are the following:
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As I said above, fundamentally, you are aiming at your evidence. You need to zoom right in on that one specific feature you promised your audience you'd focus on. In our example, it's going to be the repetition of the word "field."
You also need to EMBED your evidence. That means that you're not going to have a quote just hanging out there at the beginning or end of your sentence. Instead, you're going to surround it with your words.
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If there's one thing many beginning writers get wrong about writing essays, it's this: They think that all they have to do is quote the evidence and their work here is done. Not so fast! You have more to say.
Here is a secret: COMMENTARY IS THE BEST PART. Commentary is where you let your flags fly, folks. Commentary is where you get to demonstrate voice, judgment, connections to other thin. You're making it clear what you think and why the evidence matters and why it's relevant in the first place.
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What you'll do at this point is connect the dots. Ultimately, you need to discuss how Douglass deliberately uses that repetition to convince his audience that slavery robs all participants of their fundamental humanity and dignity. Those are words and ideas you need to come back to multiple times.
Example
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Transitions can include a number of different approaches, including transitions indicating a time shift or a passage marker (that is, telling us where we are in the passage), transitions that link evidence to the claims, and transitions that link sentences to sentences.
Time Markers
Time markers can be words or phrases such as the following:
Example
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First, Douglass' repetition of the word "field" powerfully reflects the miserable daily grind of his enslavement to demonstrate to his largely white audience that slavery robs all participants of their fundamental humanity and dignity. When the passage begins, Douglass describes the end of the working day in the field for himself and the other enslaved men and women, but as Douglass also makes clear, the work never really stops. Being done with the work in the field only means that there is different work to do inside, because looming over their every minute is the fact that the men and women have mere hours before the work in the field begins again. For example, Douglass repeats the word "field" six times in a relatively short passage including lines such as: "...the day's work in the field...preparing for the field," and most cruelly, the "morning summons to the field" which is met with brutal violence if the summons to the field is not immediately obeyed. With Douglass, we hear the word "field" again and again throughout the passage until it sounds in our ears like some neverending drum that just keeps beating. Douglass' repetition of the word allows us to feel that constant and oppressive presence of the field, the field, the field dominating everything. Even Douglass' description of his miserable and abbreviated sleep gets interrupted by the "driver's horn" summoning these exhausted people back to work. And if these men and women do not respond, they risk being brutally beaten until they rise to work for yet another endless day in the endless field. By the time the passage concludes, Douglass' repetition compels is audience to experience some tiny measure of that inhuman and inhumane level of exhaustion and futility. Here, his language turns almost Biblical, and the specific words Douglass used before--"men and women"--now disappear into "everyone...them...they," a faceless group without individual names, without individual lives, which suggests the field is all they live for. Ultimately, Douglass' words painfully emphasize that the institution of slavery has robbed from these men and women their essential pride and dignity as human beings, and his words expose the degree to which the act itself is monstrous.
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STUDENTS SHOULD AIM FOR AT LEAST 4-5 TIME MARKERS, INCLUDING BEGINNING, END, AND MIDDLE.
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Links Between Evidence and Claims
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Links between evidence and claims explicitly address the issue of WHY the evidence matters and WHAT it proves. Some common links between evidence and claims include the following.
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Example
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First, Douglass' repetition of the word "field" powerfully reflects the miserable daily grind of his enslavement to demonstrate to his largely white audience that slavery robs all participants of their fundamental humanity and dignity. When the passage begins, Douglass describes the end of the working day in the field for himself and the other enslaved men and women, but as Douglass also makes clear, the work never really stops. Being done with the work in the field only means that there is different work to do inside, because looming over their every minute is the fact that the men and women have mere hours before the work in the field begins again. For example, Douglass repeats the word "field" six times in a relatively short passage including lines such as: "...the day's work in the field...preparing for the field," and most cruelly, the "morning summons to the field" which is met with brutal violence if the summons to the field is not immediately obeyed. With Douglass, we hear the word "field" again and again throughout the passage until it sounds in our ears like some neverending drum that just keeps beating. Douglass' repetition of the word allows us to feel that constant and oppressive presence of the field, the field, the field dominating everything. Even Douglass' description of his miserable and abbreviated sleep gets interrupted by the "driver's horn" summoning these exhausted people back to work, further showing that if these men and women do not respond, they risk being brutally beaten until they rise to work for yet another endless day in the endless field. By the time the passage concludes, Douglass' repetition compels the audience to experience some tiny measure of that inhuman and inhumane level of exhaustion and futility. Here, his language turns almost Biblical, and the specific words Douglass used before--"men and women"--now disappear into "everyone...them...they," to suggest a faceless group without individual names, without individual lives, which suggests the field is all they live for. Ultimately, Douglass' words painfully emphasize that the institution of slavery has robbed from these men and women their essential pride and dignity as human beings, and his words expose the degree to which the act itself is monstrous.
STUDENTS SHOULD AIM FOR AT LEAST 5-6 OF THESE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVIDENCE AND CLAIMS.
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There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep; for when their day’s work in the field is done, the most of them having their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day; and when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down side by side, on one common bed,–the cold, damp floor,–each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets; and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver’s horn. At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field. There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if they are not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from being ready to start for the field at the sound of the horn.
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