Non-fiction study guide

Biography

The story of a person’s life, told by someone other than that person.

Autobiography

The story of a person’s life written by THAT person.

Memior

Focuses on one or more interesting people or experiences that have been important to that writer .

Essay

A short non-fiction work that presents a main idea, or thesis about a particular topic.

What are the three types of essays?

Expository Essay

Persuasive Essay

Personal Essay

Expository Essay

Explores a topic to inform or enlighten readers.

Persuasive Essay

Aims to convince readers to accept a certain point of view.

Personal Essay

Topics related to life or interests of the writer the tone could be intimate and informal.

Thesis statement

The essay’s main idea, the most important part of an essay. Located towards the end of the paragraph

Speech

A public address to people that was originally delivered orally.

Formal Speech

Calls for a great degree of preparation.

Informal speech

Situation is more casual.

What are 8 forms of supporting the main idea?

1. Facts and Sastistics

2. First hand experiences or examples.

3. Opinions of experts

4. Logical reasoning

5. Comparisons and Contrasts

6. Causes and effects

7. Research Results

8. Appeals to emotion (Pathos)

Rhetorical Device

A technique used by a speaker to achieve a particular effect especially to persuade or influence an audience. For example:

Parallelism

Repetition

Rhetorical Question

What are the types of informational writing?

• Article

• Editorial

• How-to-writing

• Website

Article

Informational piece of writing about a particular topic, event, or series of events. They usually appear in newspapers or magazines.

Editorial

Magazine or newspaper article that gives the opinions of the editors or publishers.

How -to-writing

Writing that tells the readers how to do something

Website

Electronic source of info that is available through the internet

What are some graphic aids you can use to understand informational texts.

• Charts

• Graphs

• Spreadsheets

• Diagrams

• Maps

• Drawings

• Illustrations

Bias

Personal Judgement about something or a mental learning in one direction or another.

Fact

Statement that could be proven by direct observation or supported by reliable resources.

Opinion

Expresses an attitude or a desire and not a fact about the world.