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Common Interest or Literary Analysis essays?


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How does the hive balance essays about things that interest our kids (or their opinions) against literary analysis? My graduated son complains that we didn't do enough literary analysis, so I have attempted it with 10th gr. dd. She can do a little, like a paragraph about how a poem makes her feel, or comparing a character in a story to someone else. Her writing assignments in BJU were editorial, short story, persuasive speech, research essay, poems, compare/contrast essay, and a few others. (Most of their prompts were awful, and we are kind of lost because of it). Only one assignment was remotely related to literary analysis. The A Beka lit. book we used had composition suggestions, but they were never assigned in their assignment book. We did BJU British Lit. w/dvds with my ds, and I don't remember many (any?) papers there either (but I may have forgotten). Writing/Grammar had the typical write about something that interests you in the essay format given.

 

I would like to have a general idea of what are reasonable papers to expect at each high school grade level and maybe what their content should be. I don't think we should do all literary analysis, it seems it is good to have them give an opinion, write about it, and include reasons why they feel the way they do about something (and maybe connect it to something read in literature or history, but you should have seen her face when I suggested that...). Ds friend over today said he did 5-6 papers in Eng. 101, none of them were literary analysis. Ds did less than that in his Eng. 101.

 

Hmmmmm.

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This is a concern of mine too. I'm trying to address lit. analysis more with my dd who is finishing 9th grade. I'm finding that I'm terrible at teaching someone literary analysis, and we haven't done as much as I wanted to this year. I've used WriteGuide (online writing coach) a couple of times, and she's doing a Bravewriter course in Hamlet right now.

 

For next year, to be more systematic, we're going to use The Elegant Essay (first semester) and Windows to the World Literary Analysis (second semester), both from IEW and highly recommended on this board.

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Ok, when I was in high school, all my English essays involved staking out a position and proving it from the text (i.e. literary analysis). And all my history essays were the same, only you had to use historical facts/primary sources to prove your point. I guess I'm not quite getting the implied disconnect b/w "giving an opinion and writing about it" and literary analysis/writing about history. I mean, what else is there to write about in English or history :001_huh::tongue_smilie:?

Edited by forty-two
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By opinion, I mean things like do you think its acceptable to text while driving, are you for or against abortion, does your community deserve a pool, that kind of thing. Dd has an essay prompt from SAT practice tests, and it was asking for a response about how past experiences help you succeed in the present. She gave a pretty good answer, but it said to give examples (I guess of others you know, or historical or literary figures). So I guess in the few minutes you have to write this, you have to go through your head and pick a few examples.... if you are lucky enough to find one that backs what you have said.

 

Forty-Two, I haven't had assignments like you described in any of our curriculum.... and I didn't do anything like that in school. So I am trying to address a gap I guess.

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Ok, when I was in high school, all my English essays involved staking out a position and proving it from the text (i.e. literary analysis). And all my history essays were the same, only you had to use historical facts/primary sources to prove your point. I guess I'm not quite getting the implied disconnect b/w "giving an opinion and writing about it" and literary analysis/writing about history. I mean, what else is there to write about in English or history :001_huh::tongue_smilie:?

 

I guess for me the difficulty in teaching literary analysis is not in teaching how to defend a position, but more in teaching what literary analysis is and how to understand the techniques an author is using to produce their desired effects. Analyzing the nuts and bolts--plot,character, theme, foreshadowing, etc.--and *then* writing about it.

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I guess for me the difficulty in teaching literary analysis is not in teaching how to defend a position, but more in teaching what literary analysis is and how to understand the techniques an author is using to produce their desired effects. Analyzing the nuts and bolts--plot,character, theme, foreshadowing, etc.--and *then* writing about it.

I'm with you there. I found it easy to structure an argument, but very hard to actually analyze, especially the structural stuff (syntax, diction). Honestly, I didn't even grasp the big-picture point of all the elements I was busy (allegedly) analyzing in school 'till a few years ago :glare:. A combo of reading up on CW and the progym and starting to write fiction myself brought on a light bulb moment, and I *finally* really got the point of all those annoying literary devices :lol:.

 

Anyway, in my quest for lit analysis resources, I ran across these, which might help with the nuts and bolts aspects:

 

"Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone", and "Discovering Voice: Voice Lessons for Middle and High School". These were *exactly* what I needed in high school - practice in figuring out just exactly how to go about analyzing those things, while also giving big picture reasons why I should even care in the first place.

 

Also awesome is this book - "Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities for Student Writers" - about finding and using various rhetorical devices, including standards like simile, metaphor, plus lots of others.

 

Another awesome book is "Image Grammar"; I love the concept of this grammar book, - it really hammers home the point that grammar is ultimately about facilitating *communication*, and would be great at helping kids get the *point* of literary devices. Not a pick-up-and-go book of exercises like the others, but so wonderful in how it makes grammar *inspiring*.

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