Unit #3 – How Others Persuade
Minor Paper #4: Summary – Due Monday, February 20
First choose an article from the book in Chapter 2 between pages 92 and 101. Read carefully and annotate the essay, noticing the things we discussed in class like logos, pathos, and ethos and strategies of argumentation. Then write an outline of the essay you have chosen according to the “Features of Outlining” on pg. 81. Then write a summary of the same essay, following the “Features of Summarizing” on 82. There are several keys to a good summary: giving the author’s main points to the reader without bias; paraphrasing information into your own words without plagiarizing; and giving enough of the author’s logos, pathos, and ethos to give the reader a sense of the author’s ability to persuade—without letting your own opinion get in the way. Your summary should be a page or two, whatever it takes to adequately summarize the article.
P#3: Style Analysis – Due Wednesday, February 22
This presentation challenges you to analyze an author’s style and how it affects the persuasiveness of a piece. In Interchapter 5, page 319 and following, are various stylistic tools, guidelines for evaluating style, and practice paragraphs for such analysis. Some of the stylistic tools we have worked on in class and you are already familiar with. Others may be new to you and you will have to look them up to make sure you understand them (if you are not positive, please ask—nothing will make you feel sillier than doing a presentation on a stylistic tool that is not what you say it is). In class we will look closely at Rick Reilly’s “The Swooshification of the World” on page 325 and analyze his style. Then you will be put into three groups. In your group, you will analyze the style of one of the essays that follow—“September 12, 2001: We’ll Go Forward from This Moment,” “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds Us and Defines Us,” or “I Have a Dream.” Obviously you do not need to analyze every stylistic tool, but you should zero in on the ones that are most prominent to you, the ones that seem to affect the piece the most. Your group will read the piece to the class and discuss the parts of style you feel work the strongest for this particular author. Ultimately your goal is to help the class understand how this author’s strong style works as a significant part of his/her ability to persuade.
Minor Paper #5: Analysis and Evaluation – Due Monday, March 13
This “paper” is a chance for you to think critically about what you read. The format of this, however, will be significantly different from what you might be used to. You will be part of a conversation about a piece of writing where you, as a part of your group, will discuss in writing and analyze as you go. Because of the nature of this assignment, your familiarity with Blackboard will be very important; if you aren’t good with it, sit down for a while with someone who is and make sure you know what you’re doing before you begin this project. This is how it works:
I will assign you an article to read, summarize, analyze, and evaluate. Over break, you will informally write up your evaluation in a sort of journal fashion. You will want to make several determinations: 1) What is the author’s main point? 2) Does the author effectively persuade you to agree with his point? 3) What are the key aspects of the piece that cause you to either be persuaded or not? When you have made these determinations, you will be ready to start your analysis.
After you have thought critically about this article, you will be put in a group. The other two students in your group will have read and thought about the same article as you. Come to class with your notes, your write-up of your evaluation, and be prepared to “discuss” this with the other members of your group.
For the next two days of class after break, we will meet in the computer lab on the first floor. There, you will log onto Blackboard where a group thread will be set up for you to get started on your “conversation.” Select one person to get things started. The discussion should begin with determining as a group what the author’s main point is, then move on to whether or not you feel the author was persuasive, then move on to talking specifically about the key aspects—being sure to consistently quote from the text as you go—of the article that makes it persuasive or fails to persuade.
Once the first person has begun, it is the responsibility of the rest of the group to continually respond to what the previous person has said and then follow up by bringing up another aspect of the writing and analyzing it in the same way. Remember that it is fine if you disagree—it will keep the conversation going. Be sure to cover the following:
Author’s thesis or purpose
Author’s level of critical thought on the topic
Author’s organization of ideas
Author’s ability to back up her/his claims
Author’s style and its effect
Author’s appeals to your sense of logic (Logos)
Author’s appeals to your emotions (Pathos)
Author’s appeals to her/his credibility (Ethos)
Some questions to ask:
Does this author convince me or at least make me think? How does s/he accomplish this? What texts are most convincing? Least convincing? Are there some hard and fast facts, well-supported, or some excellent logic that makes me agree?
How does this article make me feel? How did the writer get me to feel this way? What specific texts accomplish this feeling? Do I have mixed emotions? Why? Is there some conflict? What is it?
Do I trust this writer? Why? What is it specifically that makes me believe that this person is credible? Do I like her/him? Why? Do I respect her/him? Why?
As the end of your two days of conversation approaches (I would give yourselves at least 15 minutes) try to come to some conclusion about what you have discovered as you have had your online discussion. You will discuss how you felt when you first read the article, going back to the discussion you had in the beginning. Your conclusion, then, will talk about how you feel about the article now that you have finished an analysis of it. Do you still feel as you did when you began? Are there things you noticed that made a difference in the way you looked at it and thought about it?
When you have completed your intro and conclusion, one of you should print out the entire conversation (use the lab printer so you don’t have to pay for the paper or ink!) and turn this in for your grade. I will have been following your conversation as you wrote, so I’ll be familiar with what you’ve discussed. I will also interject into your conversation if I feel you’ve gotten off track so that you won’t waste your time.
Major Paper #3: Analysis and Evaluation - Due Friday, Friday, March 17
First choose two articles on the same topic from DA from pages 105 - 131. (I suggest you choose one you really don’t have a very strong opinion about—it will make this much easier). Read carefully and annotate both essays, noticing the things we discussed in class like logos, pathos, and ethos, and insights, assumptions, and overgeneralizations. If it will help you, feel free to write a brief outline or summary of each article to be absolutely certain you understand clearly what the author is trying to argue.Next you will analyze the article and then evaluate the effectiveness of the author’s argument. Based on your analysis, you will decide whether the editorial is effectively persuasive or not. You should point out positives and negatives of the writer’s craft, and you must make some overall judgment about the piece’s effect. This is to be an analysis and evaluation of rhetoric, one where you talk about the author’s use of logos, pathos, and ethos—and/or any other rhetorical tools we’ve mentioned—how they affect you as a reader, and whether or not you were persuaded. This is not, however, a discussion of the topic. Be careful about this; it trips up more students than anything else. After briefly analyzing and evaluating the first article, you will move on to the next article and analyze and evaluate it, using the same criteria you used for the first, as we did when discussing the Albom and Sowell articles. Ultimately, your job is to say which article you believe is the most persuasive and why. There is no right or wrong answer to this—I don’t want you to try to figure out what I think and go with that. I want you to think very critically about what makes writing persuasive and how these two authors manage to persuade—or don’t manage—and why you believe this is so. In the end, this should help you understand more clearly how persuasive writing does its job.
Your paper should contain a sort of outline or summary within it, something that guides the reader through the essay as you discuss what you see. Feel free to use your summary paragraph and simply add your evaluation and analysis as you go.
In order to do well on this assignment, you will have to be able to recognize and summarize the writer’s thesis as well as discuss features of his/her rhetoric (you have to “prove” that the rhetorical features either help or fail to convince a reader of the thesis). In other words, what is the author’s main point, and does s/he convince you of it?
You will need to support your argument with specific examples from the text. You may get a very clear feeling about the tone and authority of a text (for example), but you must be able to pinpoint where, and how, you got that feeling and why you think it is so successful or so unsuccessful in persuading. In other words, if you claim that the essay is successful because of its strong sense of logic, then you’ll have to actually give quotes that show this logic and then explain why this language is so logically persuasive.
Remember that you yourself are making an argument—I will be looking for a strong thesis as to what you are trying to prove about your text and its argumentative strategies. Your thesis should be something like “Bob Greene’s essay, because of his descriptive diction and strong appeal to emotion, is both compelling and persuasive.” Notice two things: that I believe it works (my evaluation), and I tell two reasons why it works (my analysis). The rest of my paper would be dedicated to proving my point.
Grading: Minor paper #4 and P#3 will be graded on a 4.0 scale as usual. Minor paper #5 will be double graded: you will receive a personal grade based on your participation in the paper, and you will receive a group grade based on your overall performance. Both grades will, as usual, be based on the five criteria: however, I will also consider participation as part of your personal grade. After giving you a double grade, the two will be considered 75% personal grade and 25% group grade. In other words, if I give you a 3.2 as a personal grade and a 2.4 as a group grade, your final grade (and the only one that will ultimately count) would be a 3.0. Keep in mind your ultimate goal for this “conversation” paper: to critically analyze what you are reading. Surface-type discussion of the piece will not do: just saying your author has a humorous tone isn’t enough. Finding an ad hominum without discussing it will not do. Think critically about how these different things affect the piece of writing, how they affect you as a reader, and how they work together with the author’s purpose. You should include a discussion of the author’s logos, pathos, and ethos, how these are affected by his/her style. Remember, too, that a logical fallacy doesn’t always work against an author’s purpose; sometimes it achieves exactly what they hoped for.
2/17 Major #2 due
Unit #3
Paraphrasing
Plagiarism
Summary
*Read “Swooshification”
2/20 Minor #4 due
Reilly and Style
Group work
*P3 due Wed.
2/22 P3 due
Presentations
2/24
Mid-Term Exam
In-Class Essay
*Read your article, annotate and analyze