Unit 6 — The Non-Fiction Essay

Learning objectives Link to heading

• I can read a contemporary non-fiction essay and identify thesis, supporting moves, and stylistic register.
• I can use vocabulary of essayistic prose (premise, claim, qualification, anecdote-as-argument, the moral turn).
• I can write a 400-word non-fiction essay of my own with a clear thesis and one anecdote-as-argument.

curriculum framework (“Bildungsplan”) alignment Link to heading

• 3.4.1 / 3.5.1 Soziokulturelles Orientierungswissen / Themen
• 3.4.3.2 / 3.5.3.2 Leseverstehen
• 3.4.3.5 / 3.5.3.5 Schreiben
• 3.4.4 / 3.5.4 Text- und Medienkompetenz

(Sources: https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-LF / https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-BF)

Lead-in story Link to heading

Mr. Yilmaz handed out a 1,200-word non-fiction essay by Zadie Smith — Speaking in Tongues (2009). The class spent the lesson learning to track the essay’s central move: an anecdote that becomes an argument, an argument that opens onto a moral turn, a moral turn that returns to the anecdote. Maja wrote in the margin: the essay walks like a small animal that knows the route.

1. Activate Link to heading

Essay-shape scan. Open the essay. With your partner, mark: where the thesis lands (paragraph 2 or 3?), where the anecdote-as-argument is, where the moral turn is.

2. Input Link to heading

Reading — Speaking in Tongues, opening (paraphrased) Link to heading

The essayist begins with a small autobiographical scene: code-switching between two voices in her own family. The anecdote is small, specific, domestic. By the third paragraph, the anecdote has become an argument about voice and authenticity. By the fifth, the argument has opened onto a moral turn — that single voice is a political demand, not a personal achievement. The closing returns to the autobiographical scene with new resonance.

Vocabulary — essayistic prose Link to heading

premise, claim, qualification, anecdote-as-argument, register shift, moral turn, essayist’s I, address, periodic sentence, elliptical close.

3. Practise Link to heading

Niveau E — controlled Link to heading

1. Match: anecdote-as-argument → small story doing argumentative work; moral turn → the essay’s ethical shift; elliptical close → unfinished but resonant ending.
2. T or F: the essayist’s I is the same as the fiction-writer’s narrator; non-fiction essays always open with the thesis.

Niveau E — productive Link to heading

3. Build 3 sentences using essayistic-prose vocabulary on Smith’s opening.

4. Produce Link to heading

Non-fiction essay (your own), 400 words. Use the anecdote-as-argument move: open with a small personal scene, develop into an argument by paragraph 3, hit a moral turn by paragraph 5, return to the scene at the close. Use 4 academic discourse markers + 2 hedges + 1 cleft.

Sample Link to heading

The first time I noticed I had two voices, I was fourteen and on the phone with my grandmother. The voice I used with her — slower, vowel-heavier, permitted to be sentimental — had nothing in common with the voice I used at school the next morning. The realisation was not interesting in itself; everyone has more than one voice. What was interesting was my unease. I felt, briefly, as if one of the two were the real one and the other a small daily betrayal. Accordingly, I tried for some weeks to merge them — to bring the school voice home and the home voice to school. Both attempts embarrassed everyone, including me. By contrast, the more I read essays by writers who code-switch professionally — Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, Jhumpa Lahiri — the more clearly I saw that the anxiety I had felt was a borrowed anxiety. It is precisely the demand for a single voice that is the political problem. The literary problem, by contrast, is the harder one: how do you keep two registers without flattening either? The essayists who do this best, in my reading, do not pretend the two voices are identical. They let the reader feel the join. Smith’s Speaking in Tongues (2009) is, in this regard, a small instruction manual: the essay’s own register shifts twice in the first three pages, and the shifts are part of the argument. Caution is warranted; complacency with one’s own voice is not. The phone call with my grandmother, returning at the close of this essay, no longer feels like a betrayal. It feels like a craft problem I have begun to solve.

5. Reflect Link to heading

• I can identify thesis, supporting moves, and stylistic register in a non-fiction essay.
• I can use 6+ essayistic-prose terms.
• I can write a 400-word non-fiction essay with anecdote-as-argument and moral turn.

One thing in your notebook: Write one sentence using something you learned in this Unit.

Exam example Link to heading

Part A — Comprehension (~24 BE) Link to heading

Read twice the Speaking in Tongues paraphrase above.

1. Opening: ___ . 2. By paragraph 3: ___ . 3. By paragraph 5: ___ . 4. Closing: ___ .

Part B — Analysis (~18 BE) Link to heading

Read the paraphrase above.

1. Three structural moves: ___ . 2. The essayist’s central political claim: ___ . 3. The moral turn: ___ . 4. The elliptical close: ___ .

Part C — Composition (~18 BE) Link to heading

Composition prompt: Write a 250-word anecdote-as-argument paragraph on a small linguistic / cultural observation. Use 2 markers + 1 cleft.

Mediation (~30 BE) Link to heading

Mediation prompt: A 200-word German Feuilleton-essay opener (e.g. from Zeit-Magazin) for an English-speaking literary-essay reader. (Source provided in class.)

Downloads Link to heading

Common pitfalls Link to heading

• Anecdote-as-argument ≠ memoir; the anecdote must do argumentative work.
• Moral turn cannot be moralistic — it must remain earned.
• Quote essayists sparingly; their voice is contagious.

Further reading / listening Link to heading

• Zadie Smith, Feel Free (essays).
• James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words (memoir-essay).

Downloads

Presentation

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Worksheet

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