Lisa: (gasps) It’s Tom Wolfe! He uses more exclamation points than any other major American writer.
Tom Wolfe: It’s true!!!!!

We’ll start, after a short period of psyching up (e.g. pounding our frontal lobes into dictionaries, cracking knuckles, trash talking Jonathan Frantzen), with the in-class rhetorical analysis essays.

Afterward, we’ll see our fellow students and note 2-3 elements: what elements are identifies, how the writer connects them to the purpose, writing style of the student.

Finally, let’s talk Boo.  Choose a paragraph to adopt and use it to make bigger points about her style, purpose, strategies, and attitude towards her subject.

Image credit: The Simpsons

We’ll start with Liu’s “Notes on a Native Speaker.” In small groups, answer the following questions.

1. What is the purpose of the list that opens the essay?  How is it meant to engage the reader?
2. How would you describe Liu’s attitude towards being “white, by acclamation” (par. 2)?
3. How does he define “assimilation?”
4. In pars. 7-10, he describes himself at a crisis point. How did he get there? What’s the problem?
5. Explain the paradox in paragraph 42. How could it be resolved?
6. What’s the deal with the hair? Why is it such a concern for him?
7. What is the overall organizational structure of the essay?
8. Note the authorities Liu cites.  How do they establish his appeal to ethos or logos?
9. What is the main claim Liu is making in this piece?

From there, I’d like us to share our Wolfe-ian pieces: first in small groups, then in the whole group. How would we characterize Wolfe’s style? Short-write.

Finally, we’ll look at a piece from Katherine Boo called The Marriage Cure.  We’ll check out the first 4-5 paragraphs, comment on rhetorical style and then finish the piece for Friday.  On Friday, we’ll knock out the in-class rhetorical analysis essay.

Resources: Here are 3 anchor papers based on the Alfred M. Green AP prompt we did earlier. This is the scoring commentary which explains which paper got what score and why. I hope this helps you prepare for the in-class rhetorical strategy essay we’ll be doing on Friday.

HW: Read Boo’s piece. Take notes on style issues throughout and how you might learn from it were you to create your own creative non-fiction piece. We’ll also do the rhetorical analysis, in-class essay on Friday.

Image credit: nyike.com