Theme and Author's Purpose
This term refers to the universal message, lesson, or deeper moral that an author wants the reader to take away from a story.
What is a theme?
This is the clear, arguable statement that answers the prompt and establishes the main point of your entire essay.
What is a thesis statement or claim statement?
This term refers to the lens through which a story is told, dictated by who is narrating (e.g., first-person, third-person limited).
What is point of view?
These words or phrases—such as however, therefore, and in addition—help connect ideas and guide the reader smoothly from one point to the next.
What are transitions?
To maintain a "consistently formal academic tone," students should avoid this type of language
What is slang, contractions, second person POV (you/your), etc
Unlike an explicit message stated directly in the text, this type of message is hidden beneath the surface and must be inferred by the reader.
What is an implicit message?
This is the section of an argumentative essay where the writer acknowledges an opposing viewpoint before immediately proving it wrong.
What is a counterargument (or rebuttal/refutation)?
This concept encompasses a person's heritage, beliefs, values, and traditions, all of which heavily influence how a narrator views the world.
What is culture (or cultural background)?
What specific writing strategies improve the clarity of an essay/body paragrah?
Clear topic sentences, examples and explanations related to main claim and topic sentences, transition phrases, keeping paragraphs focused on one idea, etc
This type of clause contains both a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a complete sentence.
What is an independent clause?
This is the primary reason an author writes a text—such as to persuade, inform, entertain, or express a deeper truth.
What is the author’s purpose?
This term describes evidence that is directly related to the claim being made and actually matters to the overall argument.
What is relevant evidence?
age, gender, race, location, socioeconomic status, religion, past experiences, etc
Name the parts of a body paragraph when writing an essay.
Topic sentence, evidence, explanation/reasoning
This punctuation mark is used to separate two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, without using a coordinating conjunction like and or but.
What is a semicolon?
When arguing which of two themes is "more central" to a story, name one way a writer might prove which theme is more prevalent.
What is analyzing diction (word choice), author's purpose, or another answer- up to judgement of Miss Elliott
This part of a body paragraph bridges the gap between a quote and the abstract thesis statement, explaining why the evidence matters.
What is commentary (or analysis/reasoning)?
When a narrator's background causes them to have a specific, sometimes narrow preference or prejudice toward a certain viewpoint, they are said to have this.
What is bias?
Why is it problematic to the clarity of an essay to introduce a new idea in the conclusion?
Makes the essay seem confusing or unfinished because you're straying from the main claim.
Sentence fragments occur when a writer leaves this kind of clause standing alone with a period, resulting in an incomplete sentence structure.
What is a dependent clause?
Read the following excerpt and give a complete theme statement: The community spent weeks building a massive concrete wall to keep the rising river from flooding their crops, celebrating their triumph over nature the day it was finished. But by the following spring, the trapped water had backed up into the local valley, entirely cutting off the village’s only freshwater supply.
Anything along the lines of the consequences of humanity trying to control nature
Explain the significance of a counterclaim AND rebuttal in argumentative writing.
Makes your argument more sound because it shows that you understand the complexity of the topic. Rebuttals shift the perspective back to why your argument is right.
What aspect of this narrator's perspective could influence the meaning of the text? "Ever since my family moved here from Mexico, I’ve learned to stay quiet in class when people joke about accents. When the teacher asked us to share stories about our childhoods, I kept mine short."
The narrator's experience as an immigrant (or cultural background as someone from a Mexican immigrant family)
Give a counterclaim with a smooth transition to the claim below:
All schools should require school uniforms because they reduce bullying and distractions in the classroom.
Although some people believe...
Some critics say...
Despite this...
etc
This stylistic problem occurs when a writer uses too many words or repeats the same ideas unnecessarily, weakening their formal tone.
What is redundancy/wordiness/repetitiveness?