Find your partner: yin = left side of room; yang = right side of room. You must
introduce each other according to your yin or yang partner.
Yin (left side):
• Name
• Site
• Best book you read
this summer
Yang (right side):
• Name
• Site
• Best movie you saw
this summer
Common Core Literacy
Standard: Reading Standard
for Informational Text
Determine an author’s
point of view or purpose in
a text and analyze how an
author uses rhetoric to
advance that point of view
or purpose.
S
M
E
L
L
Sender-Receiver Relationship
Message
Effect
Logic
Language
I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot
County, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic
record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses
know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves
thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday.
They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time,
or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me
even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought
to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master
concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent,
and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between
twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say,
some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, by Frederick
Douglass
Sender Receiver Relationship:
What is the sender-receiver relationship? Who are the
images and language meant to attract? Describe the
speaker of the text.
Sender Receiver Relationship:
What is the sender-receiver relationship? Who are the images and
language meant to attract? Describe the speaker of the text.
The speaker, Frederick Douglass, was a former slave
and abolitionist. His mostly likely audience is white
northerners, in pre-Civil War America. The
language is designed to be dramatic without being
incendiary, thereby inspiring an audience that
might be uneasy with more fiery rhetoric.
Message:
What is the message? Summarize the statements
made in the text.
Message:
What is the message? Summarize the statements
made in the text.
To show the connection between close reading and
rhetorical analysis, ask students what FACT is uncertain
for the speaker (Douglass). When they point out that he
isn’t sure of his age, ask why that is significant. They
should arrive, eventually, at the insight that knowing
one’s birth date is a key aspect of identity, and
withholding such basic information from a person is
dehumanizing. In other words, the author’s PURPOSE is
to expose the inhumanity of slavery.
Effect:
What is the desired effect?
Effect:
What is the desired effect?
Douglass intends to move the reader by
his revelations. He wants the reader to
join the Abolitionist movement.
Logic:
What logic is operating? How does it (or its absence)
affect the message? Consider the logic of the images as
well as the words.
Douglass begins with factual report (no knowledge of age), to
generalization (most slaves do not know age), to indirect commentary
(his master found his questions about his age “improper and
impertinent”). In terms of images, note the analogy between slaves and
horses, followed by the division of the year into work-oriented seasons
(“planting-time, harvest-time…). Finally, note that the passage begins
and ends with the same simple fact: Douglass is uncertain of his age.
Language:
What does the language of the text describe? How
does it affect the meaning and effectiveness of the
writing? Consider the language of the images as well as
the words.
Language:
What does the language of the text describe? How
does it affect the meaning and effectiveness of the
writing?
The understated tone makes the passage effective. The meaning is
driven home by the simplicity of the central dilemma, stated first as fact
(no “authentic record”), then as an emotion (“a source of unhappiness”),
and ending as another statement of fact (“during 1835, I was about
seventeen years old”). By burying the emotion, and emphasizing the
voice of the slave-owner who denies his request, Douglass makes it clear
that the request is reasonable and the response unreasonable.
AS English II Summer Reading @ M-A:

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

Several stories relate the experience of recent
immigrants from South Asia to the United States
Non-fiction connection:


Bharati Mukherjee’s “Two Ways to Belong in America”
Long-term goal = students write argumentative essay on
assimilation
Read and annotate “Two Ways to Belong in America”
“This is a tale of two sisters from Calcutta, Mira and Bharati, who have
lived in the United States for some 35 years…”
 What is Mukherjee’s purpose in writing the essay?
 What is the essential difference in the way the author
and her sister have chosen to live in America?
 How does Mukherjee use comparison/contrast to
establish those differences?
 Which position regarding assimilation does she
support more strongly? How do you know?
 What strategies make her argument convincing? How
does it fall short?
 Brainstorm topics related to a novel or play you plan to
teach this year (i.e., Brave New World & bioethics;
Macbeth & tyranny; The Grapes of Wrath & migrant
labor).
 Research possible non-fiction companions for the
novel or play on one topic.
 Consider how you can incorporate exploration of
author’s purpose and rhetorical strategies with larger
unit (i.e., to teach argumentative writing or to focus on
close reading).
 Find colleagues who are teaching the same text or




focusing on the same topic.
Share a non-fiction work you have found.
Discuss ways you might incorporate the non-fiction
text(s) into a novel or play unit.
Consider how you might implement the “SMELL”
strategy with the non-fiction text.
Post ideas on a shared Google document (today or
later in the year).
 Clarity: What is the Common Core standard regarding
author’s purpose and rhetorical strategies?
 Implementation: How can you use the SMELL strategy
for rhetorical analysis?
 Resources: Did you find some possible non-fiction
texts to use in conjunction with a novel or play unit?
Please complete the exit ticket (for me) and the survey
monkey (for the P.D. department) before you leave.
Thank you!