Why is it important to look at the world from other species' points of view? Author Michael Pollan claims it is a way to reanimate the earth, realize Darwinian insights, and to take the food we need from the earth while healing it in the...

While Fyodor Dostoyevsky experienced more difficulty and suffering than he did happiness, his point of view reveals aspects of humanity that are essential to the way we relate to each other now. A thorough and rich video...

Explore the validity of a famous quote by Carl Sagan, "We are made of star stuff." An episode of the ACS Reactions playlist explains how deteriorating stars became the origin of all the elements in our world. Learners consider different...

After watching a short video clip from the documentary Hemingway by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, learners read an article by Ursula Le Guin about gender roles and sexuality. Scholars then consider how an author's concept of gender roles is...

Jenna and Barbara Bush, daughters of former President George W. Bush, and author Armistead Maupin share with viewers their reasons for selecting John Knowles' A Separate Peace as one of their favorite books.

The focus of a playlist on the history of film shifts from the development of early film technology to techniques used by filmmakers like Georges Melies. Melies, a former magician, used dazzling illusions and tricky editing to create...

Would you believe whales and hippos share a common ancestor? The video discusses the evidence from a variety of scientific disciplines supporting evolution, focusing specifically on whales and their connections to hippos. The narrator...

Ordinary people, ordinary jobs, ordinary life. According to George Orwell it's the ordinary that should be the focus of literature. Introduce readers to this extraordinary writer with a short video that details how his life experiences...

Viewers get some tips on how to create suspense in their writing from a short video that draws on examples from Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and even Oedipus Rex.  Remember: It's not what happens but...

During The Holocaust, were Germans just following orders or did they truly believe they should eradicate the Jewish people? Part of a larger playlist covering ideas from all over the world, a video summary of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's...

"In embracing the diversity of human beings, we will find a sure way to human happiness." Watch as Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell delves into work of acclaimed psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz and the evolution of the food...

In this lesson, you will learn how to determine the author's point of view by analyzing key phrases in a section of text. [5:04]

In this lesson, you will learn to determine an author's point of view by examining the author's use of rhetoric. [5:31]

In this lesson, you will learn how to determine the author's point of view by analyzing character descriptions and character actions. [6:55]

In this lesson, you will learn how the author uses rhythm to express point of view by identifying the rhythm of a poem and determining what the author is trying to tell the reader through the rhythm. Login gives access to a slideshow and...

In this lesson, you will learn how a complex character is developed by contrasting that character's perception of themselves with the perception of others. [7:03]

This video compares and contrasts excerpts from a biography and the autobiography of Michael Jordan. After the instructor reads aloud both texts, she explains a Venn diagram that shows similarities and differences between the two...

Students participate in a Socratic seminar and demonstrate how to determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

In this lesson, you will learn how to determine the author's purpose by asking, "Why did the author write this?" and using text evidence to prove his purpose. [10:04]

In this lesson, you will learn how to think about the choices an author made by asking "Why did the author choose to write it this way instead of that way?" [2:41]

In this lesson, you will learn how the author uses rhyme to express point of view by identifying the rhyme scheme of a poem and determining what the author is trying to tell the reader through the rhyme scheme. Login gives access to a...