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E4.8.A

Description: Evaluate the author's purpose, audience, and message within a text.
Maps to Reading Plus skills: 6B

Exemplars

6B: Recognizing Persuasion

6B: Recognizing Persuasion

Description: Recognizing Persuasive Devices

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: I-6

I-6

Grade level: 9
Word count: 1546 words
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Synopsis: Have you ever felt that life is just work, work, work? That's just what Thoreau felt too, over 150 years ago.
Excerpt: Imagine a man was tossed out of a window when he was an infant, and so made paralyzed for life. Or imagine he was scared out of his wits by an unexpected attack, bound to an inability to think or reason. To most men today, either of these unfortunate events is regrettable chiefly because the man was incapacitated for business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.

Question: How is this part of the selection written?
  1. as an emotional appeal to connect with readers on a personal level
  2. as a presentation of facts that are supported by extensive research
  3. as an analysis of historical events that explains why certain problems repeat
  4. as a sentimental flashback that shows how much people have in common

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Imagine you want to make a documentary about a non-fiction selection you read. Describe the steps you would need to take to make your documentary as accurate and unbiased as possible.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions