Find It or Figure It Out
When the text states a fact directly and you can point right to the exact sentence on the page, it is this type of evidence.
What is Explicit evidence? (or "Find It")
In ELA, a "receipt" is another word for this, which you must use to prove your claim.
What is textual evidence?
Think of a paragraph like a player on a football team. Instead of a position, every paragraph has one of these to help build the author's argument.
What is a Structural Function? (Accept: a "Job")
Pronouns like "I", "me", and "my" tell the reader the story is written in this Point of View.
What is First-Person?
The literal, strict dictionary definition of a word, without any emotion attached to it.
What is Denotation? (Accept: Denotative meaning)
This reading skill requires you to combine text clues with your own brain to reach a logical conclusion that the author didn't state directly.
What is an Inference? (or "Figure It Out")
If the claim is "The dog was terrified," which receipt is stronger: "The dog whimpered and hid under the bed" OR "The dog ran quickly behind the dog house."
What is "The dog whimpered and hid under the bed"?
A paragraph that starts with "For example..." or provides data and statistics to prove or support a claim/idea usually has this specific structural job.
What is Providing Evidence? (Accept: Giving an Example / Proving the claim)
A Third-Person narrator who acts like a "Drone" and knows the internal hidden thoughts and feelings of EVERY character is called this.
What is Third-Person Omniscient?
The emotional feeling or cultural idea attached to a word, which can be positive, negative, or neutral (e.g., "cheap" vs. "inexpensive").
What is Connotation? (Accept: Connotative meaning)
"Marcus slammed his locker, threw his backpack on the floor, and groaned loudly."
What inference about Marcus's mood can be made here?
What is "He is angry/frustrated/having a bad day"?
This type of evidence is on the right track, but it doesn't fully prove the claim all by itself.
What is Partial Support?
When an author writes, "However, some critics argue that this program costs too much money," the paragraph is doing this job.
What is Addressing a Counterargument?
In this point of view, the narrator uses "he," "she," or "they," but the "camera" is restricted to knowing the internal thoughts and feelings of only ONE character.
What is Third-Person Limited?
The author’s overall attitude toward the subject or the audience, which is built entirely through their specific word choices. (Hint: It can be sarcastic, serious, joyful, or hostile).
What is Tone?
This is the name of the distractor on the TCAP that is a real detail from the text, but it is a trap because it supports the wrong conclusion.
What is a Trick-True?
For the claim "Sarah is a perfectionist," this is the strongest receipt: A) She spends hours on her homework, B) She erased her drawing until the paper tore because she was obsessed on getting the details right, or C) She used every different shade of blue to paint a sky on her canvas.
What is B (She erased her drawing until the paper tore because she was obsessed on getting the details right)?
If paragraph 1 explains the 100-year history of a city before paragraph 2 talks about its modern problems, paragraph 1 is doing this structural job.
What is Introduction/Defining a Term? (Accept: Building Context / Background)
This rare point of view uses the pronoun "You" to speak directly to the reader, making the reader a character in the action (e.g., "You walk into the dark room and grab the flashlight").
What is Second-Person?
If an author rewrites a sentence and changes the word "smiled" to "smirked," they have changed the connotation to a more ____ one.
What is Negative?
If a question asks, "How does the author show the characters are in danger?", the sentence "The sky was blue yesterday" is an example of...
What is a Trick-True? (Accept: Irrelevant evidence)
When a test asks for the "best" evidence, you must eliminate the Trick-True distractors and find the receipt that gives this ultimate level of support.
What is Direct Support?
A paragraph placed at the very end of an article telling the reader, "We must act now before the ocean is ruined forever," has this structural function.
What is Creating Urgency? (Accept: Call to Action)
Authors deliberately use a restricted, First-Person POV in mystery and horror stories to create this effect for the reader.
What is Suspense? (Accept: Fear / Tension / Mystery)
"The old house groaned and complained as the wind whipped its walls." This specific type of figurative language gives human qualities to non-human things to build a creepy mood.
What is Personification?