The GED Testing Service’s guidelines for addressing the "extended response" indicate that students will be asked to write about the best-supported position — the most persuasive side of an argument — presented by material of general interest from a reading passage. The resource below takes students through an example that goes over the process of writing a five-paragraph essay as an Extended Response to a question from a RLA reading passage.
Extended Response: Reasoning Through Language Arts (March 13, 2015), from How to Pass the GED - https://howtopasstheged.com/2015/03/13/extended-response-reasoning-through-language-arts/
What do you think? Leecy
Comments
Scott Solomon has oodles of resources on his website. I used his argumentative writing materials for "Dropping the Bomb" in a workshop I did. I'm not a fan of the 5 paragraph essay but......
Hi, Di. Would you share the URL for the Website your mentioned? Your mention of "Dropping the Bomb" in your recent workshop has me intrigued. Where did the bomb land?
I am also not a fan of insisting that students compose perfect five-paragraph essays although I did enough of that when I taught college writing in my earlier life. How can we best get away from that practice and still have students meet the demands in some circumstances for creating traditional 5-paragraph essays?
Any ideas out there? Leecy
Actually the resource you mentioned is from Scott Solomon's website, https://howtopasstheged.com/ The links for the Dropping the Bomb (Hiroshima) extended response material are: questions, https://howtopasstheged.com/2015/03/16/extended-response-rla-dropping-the-bomb-question/ answers, https://howtopasstheged.com/2015/03/16/extended-response-rla-dropping-the-bomb-answers/
I like the extended response materials because he provides models of how to build an essay. Models of writing are very important for struggling writers to use to improve their writing.
Got it, Di! Thanks for the clarification!
As you and others might suspect, I am a huge proponent of sharing models for developing ideas although not as tools for total replication.
So what would happen if we gave ABE students something like the following instructions?
Prompt: Why do wild birds sing? (Not in reference to Angelou's poem...). Write a one to two page response to this question either by citing research to support your views or by simply suggesting and defending your personal views as to why you think birds sing. (Note: the prompt does not require a 5-paragraph essay.)
There are several other questions that could be asked to support learner views on issues that do not have a proven theory. Any suggestions out there about what some of those prompts might be? Leecy