Wednesday 12 October 2022

Sample Journal Entry

Sample Journal Entry

    Below is a sample journal entry for a typical day in the life of a girl in the present.  Follow this same type of format to write your journal entries about the mid-1800s.  Notice how the journal entry describes everyday tasks and technologies about our present day.  Your journal will need to do the same while describing tasks and technologies from the past.


Saturday, October 6, 2007

What a busy day today!  I never had a moment’s rest.  The day started with my alarm clock blaring at 7am.  I had to be at the Smith’s house by 8am to baby-sit. I really didn’t want to wake up so early on a Saturday, but I’m saving money to buy a new iPod and couldn’t say no to an all-day babysitting job.
When I arrived at the Smith’s house, both kids were already awake.  Madison was watching cartoons in living room and Jacob was playing with his Legos in his bedroom.   The kids were hungry so I made them some oatmeal in the microwave and we all ate breakfast together. 
We had to leave right after breakfast for Jacob’s soccer practice.  Luckily, the Smiths only live a couple blocks from the soccer field so we just walked there.  It was a lot of fun watching Jacob play soccer.  He’s very talented.  I was worried that Madisonmight be bored, but she stayed busy by playing her Gameboy while Jacob practiced. 
When practice was over, we went back to the house to make lunch.  It’s always a breeze to make lunch for the Smith kids because they love chicken nuggets and French fries.  All I had to do was pull the food out of the freezer and bake it in the oven.   
After lunch, I planned a special surprise for the kids...I took them to see the new Disney movie.  The movie theater is a few miles away from their house so I had to call my mom to pick us up in her car and drive us there.  The kids loved the movie; they couldn’t stop laughing.  I have to admit that I thought it was pretty funny too.  The only bad part was that the theater had the air conditioning cranked up and it was freezing cold!
My mom picked us up again after the movie and took us back to the Smith’s house.  We had only been back for a few minutes when Mrs. Smith came back home.  I didn’t expect her home so soon, but she was back early because the power went out at her office. 
It worked out very well though because as soon as I left the Smith’s, Danielle called to see if I wanted to go to the mall.  I checked in at home to make sure it was ok and then met Danielle at her house. 
While we were at the mall, we definitely “shopped ‘til we dropped”.  I bought a t-shirt, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and some flip flops.  I know that I won’t need the flip flops for much longer since it’s already October, but they were on clearance and I couldn’t pass them up.
Finally after all that shopping, we headed home because I was exhausted.  Today was a fun day, but I can’t wait to sleep in tomorrow!

Guide to Writing Persuasive Speeches

Purpose of Speech
Speeches are usually formal spoken presentations for a particular purpose—often to persuade an audience to support an idea, or to explain or describe an interesting topic or past event.
An effective speech
  • engages the audience straight away through personal reference or surprising information.
  • uses humour, powerful ideas, imagery, rhetorical questions and repetition to make a point.
  • uses a range of sentence lengths for effect
Successful Persuasion
Successful persuasive language appeals to:
  1. LOGIC Reasoning is clear and consistent. Logic may be real or false (i.e. giving the appearance of logic)
  2. PERSON Know and understand the audience. Knowledge of personal motivations and history can be used to good effect.
  3. EMOTION Use emotional appeal, highly emotive words, images, and colours to stir an effective response.
Structure of a persuasive speech/ speech
Opening:
  • Captures audience’s attention;
  • Start with yourself and why you are speaking.
  • Include an interesting fact or item of information.
  • Clearly state your opinion.
Body
  • Developing your ideas;
  • Using questions to engage listeners.
  • Your argument.
  • Acknowledgement of the other argument/ opinion.
Conclusion
  • Summarise your speech.
  • Conclude the speech memorably.
Useful words:
Adverbs: evidently; understandably; reasonable; undoubtedly; clearly; finally; strongly; adamantly
Verbs: to challenge; to oppose; to question; to implore; to urge; to condemn; to propose; to support
Adjectives: Vital; important; essential; biased; dishonest; inappropriate; controversial; brave; foolish
Transitional words and phrases: In addition,…; Furthermore,…; Above all… It goes without saying…; Of course,…; Decidedly…; Undoubtedly…; Indeed…; In fact… Specifically,…; More importantly,… Yet,… ; However,… In summary…
Useful phrases:
This needs to be dealt with…; Some people feel that…; How could you possibly…; What would happen if…; This would mean that…; Is it really worth…/ Do you really think…; Just think about…; I believe that…; Although not everybody would agree, I want to argue that…; There are several points I want to make to support my point of view. Firstly…; I have several reasons for arguing for this point of view. My first reason is…; Therefore, although some people argue that…; think that I have shown that…; We can solve this by…; If these plans go ahead…
Read the following speech identify the persuasive techniques (personal pronouns, alliteration, fact, opinion, rhetorical questions, repetition, emotive language, statistics, rule of three)
Ladies, Gentleman and Children, lend me your ears!
I am here today to express my utter disgust at the so called ‘sport’ of fox hunting.
Some of these rich, posh, toffee-nosed public school boys in tights say that shooting foxes does not always kill the fox outright and that hunting with dogs is actually more humane. However, that could not be further from the truth. Fox hunters chose foxes purely for puerile pleasure; not because they want to help farmers. Indeed, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reported a case of a twelve year old girl and her ten year old brother being traumatized at the sight of a fox being torn limb from limb by a pack of blood-thirsty hounds. Does this sound like humane pest control to you?
Furthermore, being hunted by a wild pack is not a humane way to die. Statistics show that 92% of foxes killed in the hunt have a longer, more agonising death than these killed by more traditional methods of pest control.
Stop the murder,stop the violence, stop fox hunting!

LANGUAGE TECHNIQUES - DON'T FORGET!

ersonal anecdote

E 
motive language

R 
hetorical Questions

F 
acts/Statistics

E 
xaggeration

C 
omparison

T 
one/Rule of Three

Watch a Sample persuasive  Speech