Understanding Critical Analysis and Context

Date: January 25th, 2013

Miss Abreys Block A English Language Arts 10-1

Name:

Mark:

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Part I: Read the following statements carefully. Circle the answer that best answers each question. Multiple Choice: 1) What is the purpose of critical analysis? [1pt] a) To summarize the article b) To make the reader see the article in a negative way c) To summarize and evaluate an article d) To degrade the work of the author 2) What does it mean to evaluate a text? [1pt] a) To show its strengths and weaknesses b) To give it a rating from 1-10 c) To correct any errors it may have d) To only write about the aspects you agree with 3) The structure of a critical analysis paper has five parts. The first two are the introduction and the summary. What are the remaining three parts? [1pt] a) The body, conclusion and appendix b) The critique, conclusion, and references c) The body, conclusion, and references d) The critique, exposition, and references

Part II: Answer the following questions with full sentence answers. Please note the value of each question. Short Answer: 4) What are three differences between literary text and technical text? [3pts] 5) The school has decided to remove the break between the first and second half of second block. Take a position and describe why you agree or disagree? [3pts] 6) The Canadian government has decided that 50% of students aged 16-19 will be removed from school and enrolled in the military. How would this change the lives of both the students enrolled in the army and those who stayed in school? [3pts] 7) Research shows us that literature is affected by external factors (ie. culture, gender). What are these external factors and how do they affect what/how you read? [3pts]

8) Texting has become one of the main forms of communication for this generation. How does this influence our ability to discern meaning and context within these types of conversation? [3pts]

Part III: Reader Response 9) Read the following passage. In your own words write 4-6 sentences about the controlling ideas and themes. Please note you are not giving a summary of what is happening. [4pts] Everything that Rises Must Converge- Flannery OConnor (1965) He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her. He toyed with that idea for a few minutes and then dropped it for a momentary vision of himself participating as a sympathizer in a sit-in demonstration. This was possible but he did not linger with it. Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said. There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman Ive chosen. Shes intelligent, dignified, eve, good, and shes suffered and she hasnt thought it fun. Now persecute us, go ahead and persecute us

Part IIII: Write a 3 page critical analysis paper using the article provide; keeping in mind the formula for a well-balanced critical analysis paper. Long Answer: 10) What values are apparent in this text? How does it compare to your own beliefs and opinions? [10pts] From The Nature and Aim of Fiction Flannery OConnor The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions [F]iction is so very much an incarnational art. Now the word symbol scares a good many people off, just as the word art does. They seem to feel that a symbol is some mysterious thing put in arbitrarily by the writer to frighten the common reader- sort of a literary Masonic grip that is only for the initiated. They seem to think that it is a way of saying something that you arent actually saying, and so they approach it as if it were a problem in algebra. Find x. And when they do find or think they find this abstraction, x, then they go off with an elaborate sense of satisfaction and the notion that they have understood the story I think for the fiction writer himself, symbols are something that he uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that these are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction. People have a habit of saying, What is the theme of your story? and they expect you to give them a statement And when theyve got a statement they go off happy and feel it is no longer necessary to read the story but for the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience not an abstraction.