Body Paragraph 1: Analysis of the Plot


These lessons will help students to begin to differentiate between daily conversation and the register of academic writing. Students can practice a different editing strategy each day of the week and then submit a revised/edited/ polished paragraph at the end of the week for assessment.


In order to boost the value of the tests, maybe they can be created similar to the SAT English section questions that require you to revise passages and thus employing all of your English skills to improve the passage (in this case a prompt response/literary analysis piece). These kinds of questions also help with constructing sound arguments and thorough analyses, which is very important in the context of a novel. To set the Khan test questions apart from the SAT questions, I would think they'd be more advanced questions.

After students have practiced constructing paragraphs, they can then move on to editing their paragraphs for academic language. During this part of Literary Analysis Boot Camp, students need to focus on:

Body Paragraph 3: Theme Exploration

As far as long answers themselves, it may be useful to have questions that help learners understand how to structure detailed and strong analyses in response to a prompt. For example, if the question reads "A student was tasked with writing a response to the following prompt: []. Analyze the response and select the strong points (question 1), select a replacement sentence for the underlined sentence (question 2), etc," a few answers would be proposed for revisions among other things.

Check out this . Students can use this sample paragraph as a model and then ratiocinate their own paragraph drafts according to the same key as the sample paragraph.

These are all excellent ideas! It is very true that many of the skills you have listed are not taught or are "glossed over," and yet students are still expected to demonstrate them on standardized testing.

To practice these skills, a paragraph outline can help students organize their analysis so that it flows smoothly between evidence and commentary. My goal is to get students writing powerful and insightful literary analysis paragraphs before building up to the entire literary analysis essay. This enables a better chance at success later on when students write fully-developed essays. After all, the paragraph is an essay in miniature.


commenting on the cultural currency of your argument

The next part of Literary Analysis Essay Boot Camp involves proper paragraph structure. At this point, students will have the basic components to form a literary analysis paragraph. Students will focus on analyzing how paragraphs are structured and then move into drafting their own paragraphs that include:

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One thing I'd like to see Khan Academy undertake, although it would be huge, is to select classic works of world literature, not just in English but in other native or learned languages of the site's users, and create courses around them. The students would be expected to obtain their own copies of the books (but with some of them long out of copyright, they would likely be available online for free). The videos would lecture on highlights of the book, just as a classroom teacher would do for an assigned book. The exercises, unit quizzes, unit tests, and course challenges would ask students questions about the book, some with straightforward answers and others that would make students think about what the author was trying to say. The one limitation of Khan Academy is that the answers would have to be of a type that a "machine" could grade, probably multiple choice. In an actual classroom, essays or short answers would be the norm for these exams. Also, the question and answer platform for vidoes would be used to replace classroom discussions, but this still doesn't exist for the apps. Articles modules could serve as a sort of Cliff Notes for these books, maybe with some "pop quiz" questions embedded in them.

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Check out this FREE Commentary Four Square activity available in the . This exercise enables students to visualize how textual evidence and commentary fit together to form a chunk of analytical writing.

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Students will need more practice with commentary beyond this one week during boot camp, but focusing on this targeted skill at the beginning of the school year can get students started with practicing analysis.

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Thank you all for your support! Some revisions have been made. I'm thinking of creating a raw course structure and enlisting the help of my teachers for the next few months.