UNIT 3 - NONFICTION

Objectives:

 Express ideas and feelings through writing.

 Share strategies of writing an essay
 Write an expository, persuasive, narrative and/or descriptive essay.

What is nonfiction?
Non-fiction is a prose that deals with real events and people. It is based on true stories, on
real life situations that characters in the prose really do exist in real life. In non-fiction,
characters, settings, and events must conform to what is true. Stories cannot be manipulated by
the writer’s imagination. Textbooks, newspaper articles, and instruction manuals all fall into this
category.

Activity 1

Directions: The class will be divided into four groups, but the task will be an individual job. The
teacher will play a serene music and the students will listen and allow themselves to be
immersed in the music.

 The first group will write the factual things that are currently happening in their home.

 The second group will write their opinion about the current situation in the online
classroom.

 The third group will describe the atmosphere, the moment, and the feelings in the
online classroom during the music.

 The fourth group will write the situation in the online classroom as if they tell a story.

After the task is done, any of each group may share their insights during the activity.
Types of Nonfiction
1. Essay is a brief examination of a subject in prose, usually expressing a personal or
limited view of the topic.

Essay
Formal Essay It has a serious tone and more objective
in point of view.
Informal Essay It has an informal tone, as if the author
directly speaks to the reader.

Purposes:
 To entertain
 To inform
 To explain
 To persuade

Informal essay uses all four major types.

 Exposition

 Writer’s purpose is to inform.

 Facts are presented neutrally as possible.

 Author’s opinion on the subject doesn’t intrude.

The three-age system, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age was
introduced by Christian Thomsen, a Danish museum curator. The Bronze Age
occurred at different times in different parts of the world. Bronze technology was
preceded by an intermediary period when copper was used. The Copper Age did not
occur in Britain and China, where the transition was from bronze to iron, and earlier
from stone to bronze.

True iron metallurgy began among the Hittites between 1900-1400 B.C by 1200 to
1000 B.C, knowledge of iron metallurgy had spread throughout the Near East, the
Mediterranean, and westward to Europe. This marked the end of the Bronze Age,
although bronze working was still in use for prestige objects.

- Anonymous, Proficiency in English I

 Persuasion

 Attempts to influence the reader’s ideas of actions.

 Major purpose is to convince the reader to think, feel, or act in a certain

way.

 Successful only if the reader believes that the facts support the writer’s
opinion.

To be a friend, you have to care about people, what they think, what they feel,
what they suffer. If you just don’t like people, you may still be cordial to acquaintances,
but friendship is no go. You must try to understand people, their hopes and fears and
aspirations. At least a remnant of the dignity of the human being shines somehow
through the rags of the tramp who craves a drink and the one who needs an egg for
Easter.

Friendship stumbles most often on the rock of inconvenience. Most of us have an

abundance of good impulses which we either forget or find it inconvenient to translate
into actuality. In my experience I have found most men kindhearted. They are usually
willing to do generous things, if they can do them without much personal
inconvenience. They are thoughtful of the sorrow and the needs of others---if they
have time and the occasion is not too difficult.

Take the story of the Good Samaritan, on the road that led from Jerusalem down
to Jericho. There were many who traveled it. Among them was one who was deep in
trouble and lay helpless at the roadside. But this day on the Jericho road it was getting
late.

-Anonymous, Proficiency in English I

 Description

 Present a picture or an impression of a subject.

 Tells how something looks, smells, tastes, sounds, and feels to the touch.

My Home
Dr. Jose Rizal
Translated by Leon Ma. Guerrera

I had nine sisters and one brother. My father, a model of fathers, had given us an
education in proportion to our modest means. By dint of frugality, he was able to build
a stone house, to buy another, and to raise a small nipa hut in the midst of a grove we
had, under the shade of banana and other trees.

There, the delicious atis displayed its delicate fruit and lowered its branches as if
to save me the trouble of reaching out for them. The sweet santol, the scented and
mellow tampoy, the pink macopa vied for my favor. Farther away, the plum-tree, the
beautiful tamarind, pleased the eyes as much as they delighted the palate. Here, the
papaya stretched out its broad leaves and tempted the birds with its enormous fruits.
There, the nanca, the coffee, and the orange trees perfumed the air with aroma of their
flowers. Here and there rose elegant and majestic palm trees, loaded with huge nuts,
swaying their proud tops and graceful branches, queens of the forest.

In the twilight, a variety of birds gathered from everywhere. I amused myself

watching them with wonder and joy as they raised their voices in varied chorus, a
farewell hymn to the sun as it vanished behind the tall mountains of my town.

Came the night… But when she appeared, a vague brightness was to be
discerned in the clouds. As such times, my mother gathered us all together to say the
rosary. Afterward, we would go to the azotera or to some window from where moon
could be seen, and my aya would tell us stories.
  Narration

 Writer’s purpose is to relate a series of events.

 Events usually related in chronological order.

 Has the form of story, but the events are factual.

 Writer depicts characters, and may even use dialogue.

Tribute to a School Dropout

Brian Cavanaugh

One day a partially deaf boy came home from school with a note. It suggested that
his parents take him out of school. The note said that the boy was “too stupid to learn.”

When the boy’s mother, read the note, she said, “My son Tom isn’t too stupid to
learn. I’ll teach him by myself.”

When Tom died many years later, the people of North America paid tribute to him
by turning off the nation’s lights for one full minute.

Thomas Edison had invented not only the light bulb we ready by, but also the
motion picture we watch and the record player we used to listen to. He has 1,000
patents to his credit.

Activity 2
Write an argumentative essay about the topic Online Learning.
2. Biography is an account of someone’s life, written by another person. It has derivations: Bio
means life and graphia means writing.

 Focus

 The character

 His/her career

 His/her place in history

 Uniqueness and universality of the character’s experience.

Tribute to a School Dropout

Brian Cavanaugh

One day a partially deaf boy came home from school with a note. It suggested that
his parents take him out of school. The note said that the boy was “too stupid to learn.”

When the boy’s mother, read the note, she said, “My son Tom isn’t too stupid to
learn. I’ll teach him by myself.”

When Tom died many years later, the people of North America paid tribute to him
by turning off the nation’s lights for one full minute.

Thomas Edison had invented not only the light bulb we ready by, but also the
motion picture we watch and the record player we used to listen to. He has 1,000
patents to his credit.

3. Autobiography is an account of writer’s life. A life story written by the writer himself or
herself. Its derivations are: Auto, which means self, and graphia that means life.

 Journal is a form of autobiographical writing including a day-by-day chronicle of

events, usually a personal or intimate record of events and thought kept by an
individual.

e.g Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

 Saturday, 12 February, 1944

Dear Kitty,

The sun is shining. The sky is a deep blue. There is a lovely breeze and I’m
longing--so longing for everything. To talk, to be free, to have friends, to be alone.
And I do so long… to cry!

I feel as if I’m going to burst, and I know that it would get better with crying; but
I can’t. I’m restless. I go from one room to the other, breathe through the crack of a
closed window, feel my heart beating as if it is saying, “Can’t you satisfy my
longings at last?”

I feel that it’s spring within me. I feel that spring is awakening. I feel it in my
whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally; I feel utterly confused, don’t
know what to do, what to do. I only know that I am longing…

Anne

Activity 3

Directions: If you are given a chance to run for presidency, how would you convince the people
to vote for you? Create and record a two-minute persuasive speech using any recording app.
Check Google Classroom for video uploading instructions.

4. Oratory is a formal speech intended to inspire some action.

For example:

The Leading Edge in Competitiveness

Manuel Pangilinan
CEO, PLDT

What did we do to compose the future of our existing business venture and
enhance its competitiveness?

We crafted an agenda that was transforming in nature, with an eye on a single

goal; the reinvention of our huge business enterprise. This transformation agenda
deals with building new businesses which can protect and enhance our existing
core business.

This reminds me of a CEO from the distant past---Alexander the Great---who

ruled---you might even say managed---the largest area of the known earth ever
conquered by a single individual. And although Alexander may not have been one’s
idea of the model CEO, he amassed an amazing kingdom in fewer than four years,
covering over thousand miles by foot from Mt. Olympus in Greece to Mount Everest
in the Himalayas. But did Alexander create lasting value? Probably not. Because
just a few years after his death, his empire dissolved, and the captured territories
slipped away.

Alexander’s problem was neither inadequate resources nor poor execution.

After all, he was never defeated in all of his battles. It was the absence of a long-
term plan, combined with the inability to consolidate his exceptionally outstanding
short gains that caused his empire’s rapid disintegration.

Indeed, the selection of new businesses is the decision that most often triggers
a new burst of profitable growth, if you get it right; or distraction and stagnation
when you get it wrong. Embodied in this decision is a fundamental tension between
maintaining the core business on one hand and expanding into other business
adjacent to the core business on the other hand, to maintain and sustain business
growth. The way a company resolves this tension ultimately determines the
sustainability of its growth.

The best way to thrive in a competitive environment is by innovating.

Innovation is not just a virtue; it is necessity. How do we manage this? We engage
people who can create the best products and services---people who work hard and
long to choose that a product offering is just right, that whatever service we are
presenting is the best it can be. Heretofore, innovation dealt mostly with
technology. Today, we need more than technology. We need competencies---in
people, in processes, in organizational skills built for efficiency, and motivating
them for creativity and for growth.

In closing, let me just say that it is important that we expand our perspective to
the domain of people welfare. After all, the standard by which a business should be
 measured is, in the first instance, the profits it produces, and in the final case, by
how it leads in effecting the changes necessary to enhance welfare and well-being.

In closing, let me quote the economist Gunnar Myrdal who describes economic
growth as “the upward movement of the entire social system.”

5. Sermon is a formal discussion, usually oral, of a serious subject for the purpose of
religious instruction or urgent advice and recommendations.

“Nevertheless he (David) would not drink thereof, but poured it unto the Lord.”

- 2 Samuel 23:6

What has been like water from the well of Bethlehem to you recently---love, friendship,
spiritual blessing?

Then at the peril of your soul, you take it to satisfy yourself. If you do, you cannot pour it our
before the Lord.

You can never sanctify to God that with which you long to satisfy yourself. If you satisfy
yourself with the blessings from God, it will corrupt you; you must sacrifice it, pour it out, do
what common men and common sense say is an absurd waste. Every blessing that you receive
after Calvary is water from the well of Bethlehem that’s paid with a great price. They are not
meant to be used for self-satisfaction but must be poured out before the Lord.

If you’re always taking blessings to yourself and never learn to pour out anything unto the
Lord, other people do not get their horizon enlarged through you.

-Anonymous

6. Letters is a communication in writing to another person or a group of persons.

e.g Epistle, a formal letter intended for public reading.

 7. Aphorism or Proverb is a brief statement usually of one sentence that expresses
some truth about life in terse, easily remembered form.

Proverbs 13:10 (KJV Bible)

Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.

8. Epitaph is a commemorative verses or lines inscribed on tombs or headstones. It

usually includes the name of the deceased, the dates of birth and death, age,
profession, and some pious motto.

9. News is a report of everyday events in society, government, science and industry, and
accidents, happening nationally or not.

Post Assessment

See Google Classroom