“The Last Meow” Writing Revisions

What have you got? Underline your thesis statement. Put a star next to any anecdotes you have. Put a big check mark next to any direct quotes you have in support of your thesis. Put a dollar sign next to any statistics or expert opinions you included. Put a sad face next to a counterargument. Put a big exclamation point next to your conclusion.

Revising your INTRODUCTION Read “Healing the Broken Heart” and answer the questions that follow. Does your essay include an anecdote? Does it have specific details (names, descriptive imagery, titles…)?

1. Relate an engaging anecdote from your life or observations 1. Relate an engaging anecdote from your life or observations. Provide sensory details (imagery) and specific names of people, places, and things. If your rough draft doesn’t have an anecdote: Brainstorm – you can put it into a paragraph later. If your rough draft has an anecdote (anywhere), add titles and names and descriptive imagery.

Revising your introduction Formulate a position statement. What do you think about the author’s stance? Make sure you can come up with at least two reasons that support what you think. Evidence must come from the essay “The Last Meow” Write a position statement. Provide two reasons that support your position. Your reasons need to be strong enough to become entire paragraphs.

Revising your introduction Include an author/title reference. In the article “The Last Meow,” Burkhard Bilger shows that ________________________.

Put it all together into an Introduction Anecdote with names and sensory details (2- 3 sentences minimum) Position statement with reasons (2-3 sentences) Author/title reference (1 sentence)

Revising Body Paragraphs Types of supporting evidence you should include: Facts (paragraph 9, 35...) Statistics (paragraph 13...) Statements from authorities (paragraph 37, 38...) Examples (paragraph 10, 16...) Anecdotes (part 1, part 6) (What’s in parenthesis is just a starting point, there are MANY, MANY, MANY more examples of each type of evidence in the long article, “The Last Meow,” and your essay, and thus your grade, will benefit from your finding and using them)

Body Paragraphs revision, part two Identify your reason for agreeing with or not agreeing with the author’s viewpoint. Support your reason with two pieces of evidence from the article and your explanation of the importance of each piece of evidence. (Do this twice – one for each body paragraph) Reason: Pets are more valuable than money because you cannot put a price on feeling. Support: In the article, Karen Levering says, “I don’t know what I would have done without the cats.” (paragraph 21) Explanation: Levering is explaining how her cats helped her make it though a physically and emotionally painful time. Without the cats, who knows what may have happened to her. It could be argued that the cats saved her life.

Counterargument (paragraph 4) Give a reason someone may disagree with your position. Find and quote or paraphrase support from the article. Explain the quote. (this is what you did for your support body paragraphs, but with just the opposite arguments)

Conclusion Restate your thesis in a new way, perhaps rebutting the counterargument from paragraph four. (1-2 sentences) Restate the argument from “The Last Meow” and include why you agree or disagree with it. (1 sentence) Create a “call to action” suggesting what your readers should do about the situation. (1-2 sentences)

Citations In your essay, just put the paragraph number in parenthesis at the end of a sentence, but before the period. EX: Levering explained his dilemma by stating, “My wife is totally wiped out about this” (paragraph 7). EX: A study at the State University of New York found that people with pets have less stress (paragraph 22). After your essay – skip two lines and put your work cited exactly like this: Bilger, Burkhard. “The Last Meow.” New Yorker 8 Sept. 2003. Web. 5 Jan. 2013. www.newyorker.com