the girl with 7 names essay

ackground

In this unit, you will incorporate critical reading and response strategies into your writing repertoire. By wrestling with complex ideas presented in a book, analyzing specialized language, pulling out details, and mapping an argument, you will fully engage with a text and discover how reading critically and carefully can help you to more fully understand any text.

Further, engaging deeply with a text, will help you to understand how to construct your own complex arguments and to avoid simplistic solutions. Such skills will be especially useful when writing researched argumentative essays in this and other college classes.

Assignment Details

For this essay, you need to carefully read and understand a specific text (The Girl with Seven Names). Dont worry if at first the text seems difficult or overwhelming. You and your peers will read, analyze, and discuss the text in the class.

Keep in mind the characteristics of successful reviews that are described in our textbook (see page 302 in Everyones an Author):

• Relevant information about the text
• Criteria for the evaluation
• A well-supported evaluation
• Attention to the audiences needs and expectations
• An authoritative tone
• Awareness of the ethics of reviewing

You will write a review by both summarizing and analyzing the text. Remember that your purpose here is not to agree or disagree with the author. Rather, your purpose is to use careful reading strategies to understand what the text is trying to convey to the audience.

To help you begin, consider how you would describe the plot of a movie when you really liked it and want to convince all of your friends to go see it immediately. How does the style and tone of your description change if you hated the movie? Use these strategies when responding to your text for this assignment.

Style and Format

The style and format of this assignment will vary depending on your audience, but it is meant to show your reader that you fully understand the content of a text. Feel free to play with the tone of your essay; make your response fun to read by going beyond just telling what happened. Consider how you want the reader to feel about the book. For example, if you want to motivate the reader to read the book, you will probably use language that is more positive and playful than if you wanted your reader to avoid it.

Requirements: 4-5 pages, double-spaced, properly formatted

Audience

Consider your audience carefully. Are you writing this review to your parents? Instructor? Younger sibling? Perhaps, you want to write it for high school students who have yet to learn critical reading strategies. How will your tone change if you want to teach a reader to understand the text more fully? Whomever you choose as your audience, remember that your goal is to produce an interesting review of this text.

Tips

• Create a map of the ideas presented in the text; this map could be a literal map, a spider graph, an outline, or any other visual representation of the text. Dont be afraid to have fun with this part of the assignment. Go ahead: use color or graphics.
• Trace the logic used by the author to reach a conclusion (e.g. evidence, data, opinions, stories, or even descriptions).
• Discuss the book with various people (inside and outside the university). Pay attention to the details you choose to share depending on your audience.
• Underline key passages or places where youre most intrigued or confused.
• Look up words that youre unfamiliar with or have never read before. Once you grasp the full meaning of the word, try using it in a sentence with a friend or in a written message to someone.
• Take advantage of moments when you feel frustrated with the text; these are great opportunities to make fun of writing and its complexities. Remember that not all writing is good writingeven if its published.