Page 18 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over My Notes living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever
you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are
usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, we cannot
always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They “laid themselves out,” they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression.
You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart.
After Reading
3. When you have finished reading, respond to the questions below in the space provided. Be prepared to discuss your answers with your classmates.
a. Purpose: What is the writer’s purpose for writing this argument? (Refer to the sentence in the first paragraph that you highlighted for the claim or thesis of the essay.)
Sample response: The purpose is to convince the audience of the value of owning books.
b. Audience: Who do you think the writer had in mind as an audience for this argument? To whom do the reasons and evidence seem addressed? How do you know?
Sample response: The target audience seems to be people who don’t already own many books or who don’t value reading.
c. Support: What facts, examples, and personal experiences does the writer present as evidence to support the argument? What evidence is most relevant and effective, and why?
Sample response: Facts, examples, personal experiences presented as evidence: “Books are for use, not for show...for marking favorite passages.”
“[I]f you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends.”
Most effective support includes: “Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality...”
“...you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas...”
d. Opposing Claims or Viewpoints: What opposing viewpoints does the writer acknowledge?
Sample response: The writer introduces an opposing point of view in the fourth paragraph when he mentions the importance of real, live friends. Then he counters with the idea of the advantages of “book friends.”
Writing Workshop 2 • Argumentative Writing 3
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