1. Upcoming Due Dates: Bring in a COMPLETE rough draft of your essay tomorrow. It must be printed out. The writing lab (room 312) opens at 7:00 in the morning if you need to print there. Your final essay is due through Turnitin.com by 8:00 a.m. Thursday. You must use Turnitin. If you do not, you will receive an office referral. If you have account problems, get them resolved NOW. Don’t just create another account if you have one already. Author’s Argument Test is on Friday.

2. Feedback and Reflections on Author’s Argument Test and 451 Essay

3. Author’s Argument: Claim & Evidence Identifying the problem. Stating claim. Clarifying the problem. Re- stating claim (solution). Body Paragraph 1: Support for solution Body Paragraph 2: Support for solution Body Paragraph 3: Support for solution Conclusion

4. Author’s Argument: Claim and Evidence (Support) Japan’s entire social structure, including families, businesses, and the government, must work together to encourage families to have babies. Society should help set up ways for them both to work and to have children. Claim- notice the outline of support (families, business, government) Re-stating claim before presenting support

5. Author’s Argument: Claim and Evidence (Support) One major force in society that has the power to enable women both to work and to raise children is Japanese companies. Usually, people don’t think of a company as a force in shaping families, but this attitude should be reconsidered. Japanese companies need to recognize their role in shaping families and think more about supporting them. First, they should offer affordable child care, and the government should help them. According to my pen pal in Norway, for example, Norway has a good system of child care, where working mothers can even visit their children at lunchtime. Furthermore, in Norway, you can see a high rate of working women and a stable birthrate. Topic Sentence Counter-argument Support for claim Anecdotal evidence

6. Fahrenheit 451 Essay Formatting The title of a book should always be italicized. Fahrenheit 451 MLA Formatting Includes: double spacing correct 4-line heading Times New Roman font, size 12 1 inch margins

7. Mechanics We have REPEATEDLY discussed the fact that 1 st and 2 nd person pronouns are not appropriate for literary analysis writing. If you use them (I, me, you, us, we, our) you will score lower in the writing category. Learn how to write in 3 rd person. You will have to do this for many years.

8. Mechanics Avoid the overuse of “to be” verbs (is, are). Work on varying your sentence structures. Example: “Montag is frustrated with the lack of personal interactions.” Change: “The lack of personal interactions frustrates Montag.”

9. Introduction Paragraph Your handout does tell you to identify the characters of the novel, but don’t just list them. Work them into your brief summary. Write as if the reader is familiar with the novel. Don’t introduce the characters, refer to them as you establish your essay topic.

10. Introduction Paragraph Your summary should relate to your thesis. Some students summarized the entire plot in very general terms and then abruptly stated a very specific thesis. Summarize the aspects of the plot that relate to your thesis.

11. Example of strong intro “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal” (58). In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury writes the story of a society masking conformity as equality by means of censorship. The main character, Guy Montag, is at first oblivious to all of the problems in his “perfect” life, until he meets a slightly unorthodox Clarisse. Clarisse opens Montag’s eyes to the joy and beauty in the small things in life, sparking something rebellious and inquisitive in him. Faced with pressure from Captain Beatty and his wife, Mildred, Montag must choose between continuing living his dull, boring, conformity filled life, or risking everything in hopes of a better future. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury utilizes the character of Clarisse to symbolize nonconformity, and to express the dangers of conforming to society.

12. Strengths of this example: Paragraph is unified, emphasizing one topic of the novel. Characters and their relationship to the topic of conformity are referred to, but not introduced or listed. Sentence structure is advanced and varied.

13. Organization/Thesis Remember, the thesis is the controlling idea of your paper. You must support everything you say in it, using the same order of points. If you say you are going to discuss Faber, Montag, and Mildred, your quotes about them should follow that same order. You can’t say in your thesis that Bradbury uses figurative language to express an idea and then never discuss figurative language in your essay. Some of you put figurative language in your thesis and then never mentioned it again. If the thesis is the controlling idea of your entire paper, this should not happen! The word “how” makes your thesis a summary statement rather than a claim. Replace “how” with “that”. Blah blah shows that blah blah. (rather than “shows how”…)

14. Analysis Your analysis should not summarize the quote, but it should briefly explain the context of the quote. Otherwise, your reader cannot fully understand your analysis. The analysis MUST explain HOW your quote supports your thesis. Everything goes back to the thesis. Don’t just explain the quote, explain how it supports your overall claim. Your analysis must be fully developed. It is almost impossible to fully analysis your quote and prove how it supports the thesis in 1-2 sentences.

15. Analysis Your analysis has to be rooted in the text. You can’t make general statements that are just your opinions or observations. You can’t say, “Book burning is bad because it takes away knowledge.” – there is no textual basis for this. Who is saying this? But you can say, “The book’s society’s extreme ignorance of their own unhappiness demonstrates the consequences of a lack of knowledge brought on by book burning.” This links your analysis to the text. You should be able to provide evidence (quotes) from throughout the entire text. You cannot completely defend a thesis with evidence all from the first 50 pages of the book.

16. Analysis Example Thesis: In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses similes and metaphors to demonstrate the impact of individuality in a conformist society.

17. Analysis Example Quote: “He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself bright and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact (7).”

18. Analysis Example Analysis: In the quote, Montag looks into Clarisse’s eyes and not only sees himself clearly and brightly, but he also sees tiny and seemingly insignificant features such as the lines of his mouth. This is a key example of how the individuality of Clarisse impacts Montag. Despite the swift and hasty pace that Montag takes with his life, he actually slows down and takes the time to see small details that he would have typically overlooked. This quote is significant because it demonstrates how the uniqueness of Clarisse allows the opportunity for Montag to fully see himself. Orange- context and brief explanation of quote Purple- explanation of how quote supports thesis