Nonfiction

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: Types of Nonfiction

• An essay is a short, subjective piece of writing whose purpose can be informative, persuasive, or descriptive.
• Speeches are pieces of writing that are similar to essays in several ways but are designed to be read aloud or recited to an audience.
• A biography is a true and detailed account of another person's life; it often covers that person's private life as well as his or her significant experiences and accomplishments.
• An autobiography is similar to a biography except that the author is telling the story of his or her own life and not of someone else's.
• A memoir provides an account of a small but significant portion of a person's life; like an autobiography, the story is told by that person.

Lesson 2: Pakistan

• Much of Pakistan was home to one of the most significant ancient civilizations in history, although the country of Pakistan itself has been in existence for only about 70 years.

Lesson 3: The Taliban

• The Taliban are a group of fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who believe in a very strict version of Islam and strive for an Islamic state (theocracy).
• The word talib means "student" in Pashto, the language of the Pashtun people; the plural form is taliban. The name comes from the fact that many of the first men in the Taliban had attended religious schools (called madrassas).
• Sharia law is Islamic religious law. These are rules that followers of Islam are required to follow. The Taliban's interpretation of sharia law is extremely strict and carries harsh punishments.

Lesson 4: Dear Diary

• Quoting means accurately copying text word for word and enclosing it within quotation marks.
• Summarizing means taking a larger block of text and stating the main points in your own words. Summaries are shorter and less detailed than the original text.
• Paraphrasing involves expressing a small amount of text in your own words; the goal is to preserve the essential information of the original text while stating it differently.
• Unless the information from your source is common knowledge, you must give credit to (cite) your source, whether you are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
• Common knowledge includes information such as dates, locations, and ideas generally recognized as true. The exact information is available from a variety of sources.
• Plagiarism means not citing sources you've used in your writing or citing them incorrectly or incompletely.

Lesson 5: Displacement

• [none]

Lesson 6: A Day Like Any Other

• [none]

Lesson 7: Life in England

• [none]

Lesson 8: Civil Rights

• Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most racially segregated and violent cities in America.
• The number of racially motivated bombings that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and remain unsolved is said to be over 80. This number does not include the ones which were solved or not deemed racist.
• On Easter weekend of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights advocates launched a series of highly organized nonviolent actions including marches and sit-ins. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested and put in solitary confinement in Birmingham jail.
• Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is a response to a published open letter from a group of white clergymen who condemned Dr. King and the civil rights protesters.

Lesson 9: Civil Disobedience

• Henry David Thoreau was an author and social commentator who lived during the time of slavery and American westward expansion, both of which he hated.
• Henry David Thoreau wrote a political essay called "Civil Disobedience" describing the potential for a nonviolent overthrow of the American government.
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not agree with all of Henry David Thoreau's views, but King was inspired by Thoreau's commitment to seek societal change through nonviolent protest.
• When people, in an open and public way, refuse to comply with a law that they believe is unjust, they are participating in a form of political protest called civil disobedience.

Lesson 10: Learning from the Past

• Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize because he dedicated his life to raising awareness of human rights abuses and mass atrocities.
• A prepared speech delivered in public or at a formal gathering is called an oration.
• A war crime is a horrific act perpetrated by someone who takes advantage of the chaos and failed societal structures that exist during wartime.
• A universal truth is an assertion that applies to all people, at all times, and all places.

Lesson 11: A Boy's Story

• The conflict in Sierra Leone began in 1991 when rebel soldiers, with help from the Liberian president, fought to overthrow the corrupt government. The civil war lasted 11 years.
• Initialisms and acronyms are both abbreviations containing the first letter or letters of each word of a phrase. In an initialism, each letter is pronounced individually in the abbreviation (such as Federal Bureau of Investigations = FBI). In an acronym, the abbreviation forms a word (such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration = NASA).

Lesson 12: Running from War

• To effectively transition from your own writing to a quotation, you can write a complete introductory sentence followed by a colon and then the quotation, use a short introductory phrase followed by a comma, or integrate a small section of the quotation into your own writing.
• Use square brackets [ ] to indicate that a word in a quotation has been changed. Common uses include changes in verb tense or capitalization to make a sentence flow smoothly or be grammatically correct. Words in square brackets can also clarify information, such as when a pronoun is replaced with the person's name.
• Use an ellipsis (a set of three dots) to indicate that part of a quotation is missing.

Lesson 13: Child Soldier

• As of 2002, it is a war crime to enlist youth under 15 to engage in armed conflict (according to the International Criminal Court).

Lesson 14: Rehabilitation

• UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) works in 190 countries to protect children's rights.
• The Geneva Conventions are a group of documents that contain internationally agreed-upon standards for how non-combatants should be treated during wartime.

Lesson 15: A New Life

• Rhetoric is the art or technique of using language effectively to persuade the reader.
• An author's writing style is the way the author chooses words and structures sentences and paragraphs to create an overall effect.
• Summaries are shorter and less detailed than the original text. Summaries include the main ideas and most important points of the original. Like paraphrasing, all of the information should be in your own words.

Final Project: Expository Essay

• Expository writing is writing whose purpose it is to explain or educate. It is also called informative writing.

Semester Exam: Semester Exam

• [none]