Rhetorical Analysis Writing Assignment

Specific Learning Objectives

By completing this assignment, you will practice identifying some of the different rhetorical appeals that authors can use to address an intended audience. You will use your impressions to understand how and why the authors might address an audience in a particularly interesting or strange way.This connects back to our larger goals for this course. In this assignment alone, you will be:

Ø exploring and strategically examine the principles of rhetoric and composition (e.g. audience, purpose, appeals, etc.) for the texts you analyze and for your own text;

Ø you will use invention tactics such as brainstorming and outlining as well as two scholarly articles or one scholarly article and one TEDx talk, to develop analytical points; and finally,

Ø you will be reflecting on the composition practices of the text’s creator all with the goal of enhancing your critical thinking, reading, and writing both in and outside of the classroom.

Instructions: Using all brainstormed ideas, construct your rhetorical analysis draft. Be sure that you have answered all questions from the brainstorming. One exception might be “representation.”Do include it in your analysis if it applies to the sources you are analyzing.

Here are some suggestions on how to draft your rhetorical analysis paper. Keep in mind --- rhetorical analyses can be structured differently.

·   Decide on one organizational structure. There are two basic ways to organize the body of your draft and either is fine. Just be sure that your organization is consistent throughout the draft.

1. in text-by-text, you discuss all of A (source 1), then all of B (source 2).

2.   in point-by-point, you alternate points about A (source 1) with points about B (source 2).

·   I highly recommendthat you outline your ideas per the organizational structure you have determined to work best for you to produce ideas and write. Outlining is a great way to explore and discover this and to show the order in which your ideas will appear in the draft.

·   After you have an idea of how you will structure your ideas, begin drafting, starting with one section. For instance, if you start with the introduction, summarizeor provide a brief overview of both texts since we have not read them. We will need this background as readers, to understand your analysis. Then, formulate your thesis statement. For this paper, the thesis statement should be the last sentence in the intro. and like the paper, it should be analytical.

·   With the first body paragraph, begin your analysis by identifyingone rhetorical aspect in the topic sentence. Go to your brainstorming and use your responses about a rhetorical aspect to help you construct a paragraph. For each rhetorical aspect, be prepared to show evidence from the text of what you say. Interpretwhat the source says and share your impression of how source evidence shows how the writer is trying to influence an audience.

·   Conclude by referring back to your thesis statement, bysummarizing your findings, and bycritiquingthe effectiveness and/or ineffectiveness of both sources.

·   Cite both sources on a separate Works Cited page that is formatted per MLA guidelines. If you need help with this, check out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rXoM4eW7_4

The maximum word count for this paper is 1500 words which equates to about 4 pages max.

Be sure to review the grade rubric for the revised paper during the week of March 3. I encourage you to not only read it to understand how you will be graded but also as a checklist to insure you have included all paper requirements.