1. Welcome to Unit 1: Text Analysis
English 4 CP – Ms. Reyburn

2. What will you be learning/reviewing?1
W WRITE informative/explanatory texts TO EXAMINE AND CONVEY complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
What does this mean? You will be learning to write a type of informative text called a précis. As part of this, you will practice:
Writing thesis statements
Choosing and selecting relevant facts to include in your writing
Forming conclusions

3. What will you be learning/reviewing?2
RI CITE strong and thorough textual evidence TO SUPPORT analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
Essentially, we will be reading a number of non-fiction texts and working on analyzing what the author is saying and how he/she communicates.
You will practice identifying key messages in a piece of text and citing text references correctly.

4. What will you be learning/reviewing?3
RI DETERMINE an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, ANALYZING how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
You will identify the author’s intent in writing the non- fiction piece.
You will analyze the style of the writing and see if it is effective.

5. Unit 4 Overview This unit will take 2-3 weeks. You will be completing:
A pre- and post-assessment
Reading non-fiction articles about careers
Writing multiple précis
Researching a career
Completing a career brochure for an in-class career fair
Deadlines and requirements will be communicated later this week. Start thinking about what career you would like to research.

6. What is a rhetorical précis anyhow?
Looks like a funny word… it’s French and pronounced like “pray see.”
So what is it anyhow? Here is the definition according to Oxford Dictionaries: “a summary or an abstract of a text or speech.”
However, it is more than what you probably imagine when you think of a summary. It has a precise format.

7. Summary vs. Précis
In your notebook, write one sentence that describes what a summary does. Then share it with your neighbor.
In elementary school, you probably learned to write a summary using the words: first, next, then, finally.

8. Purposes of a rhetorical précis:
To practice writing a concise summary of an argument (a précis is generally one-third to one- half the length of the actual article or speech).
To demonstrate understanding of the techniques used by the author.

9. The five steps of a rhetorical précis
Introduce the writer/speaker, text, and central claim.
Explain how the author develops the argument.
State the author’s purpose in writing the text.
Describe the intended audience and author’s relationship to the audience.
Explain the significance of the work.
Source: AVID critical reading student handout 10.7