Analyzing argument and author's craft on the NC English II EOC: complete overview - North Carolina

Analyzing argument and author's craft gathers the higher-order reading skills on the NC English II EOC. These items, drawn from the NCSCOS standards under Integration of Knowledge and Ideas and Craft and Structure, ask you to analyze and evaluate, not just locate information. This site breaks the skill into five dot points. This overview maps the five skills, how they connect, and how to study them.

The five argument and craft skills

Each skill asks you to reason about a text, not just retrieve from it.

• Delineating an argument and its claims. Separating the central claim from reasons, evidence, and counterclaims. See delineating an argument and its claims.
• Evaluating reasoning and evidence. Judging whether logic is sound and evidence is relevant and sufficient, and spotting fallacies. See evaluating reasoning and evidence.
• Rhetorical appeals and techniques. Ethos, pathos, logos, and persuasive moves, and how they work. See rhetorical appeals and techniques.
• Analyzing the author's craft. Reading word, sentence, structure, and tone choices as purposeful. See analyzing the author's craft.
• Bias, perspective, and counterclaims. One-sidedness, fact versus opinion, and how an author treats the other side. See bias, perspective, and counterclaims.

The thread through every skill: analyze and evaluate

Two demands run through all five skills. The first is analysis: explaining how a text works, how a claim is built, how an appeal persuades, how a craft choice creates an effect, rather than retelling what it says. The second is evaluation: judging the quality and fairness of an argument, its reasoning, its evidence, its balance. Delineating an argument feeds evaluating it (you cannot judge what you have not separated); rhetoric and craft explain how it persuades; bias asks whether it is fair. The common move on every constructed response here is to name a choice, support it with evidence, and explain its effect or its service to purpose.

How the argument and craft skills are tested

• Multiple choice: the central claim, the weakness in an argument, the primary appeal, the effect of a craft choice, whether a passage is biased.
• Technology-enhanced items: sort statements into claim, reason, evidence, and counterclaim; select the line that shows an appeal; highlight a craft choice.
• Constructed response: name a craft or rhetorical choice (or evaluate an argument) and explain how it works or how well it succeeds, with evidence, for 2 points.

How to study argument and craft

1. Map arguments. For each argumentative text, separate the claim, reasons, evidence, and counterclaims.
2. Evaluate them. Judge whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence relevant and sufficient, and name any fallacy.
3. Identify the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) and explain how each persuades.
4. Read craft as deliberate. Notice a specific choice (word, sentence, order) and connect it to purpose.
5. Watch for bias and counterclaims. Tell fact from opinion, spot one-sidedness by omission, and see how the author handles the other side.

For the official exam materials

NCDPI publishes the test specifications, released forms, and the NC Standard Course of Study for English Language Arts. See the EOC English II test specifications and the English Language Arts Standard Course of Study. Always study from the current released materials, because the blueprint and item types are set by NCDPI.