Week 3/4 - Monday, Sept. 20, 2010

Class Activities:
• Roll

• Review BA 2 – Any Questions?

• Comma Review (in email, will go over next class)

• Introduction to Draft 1.1

Draft 1.1: Rhetorical Analysis

Reading 6: E-Handbook Ch. 3

Objective: To demonstrate your ability to rhetorically analyze texts.

Purpose: In the first half of the course, you have been honing your writing skills so as to prepare you for college level writing. You will use all of these skills, (summarizing, paraphrasing, critical reading, constructing thesis statements, and using supporting material via quotations) throughout your writing of this assignment.

Description: To complete this assignment, you will begin by selecting a text to analyze. You may either select an essay from Ch. 9 of your textbook, or another piece of writing from a scholarly journal, reputable newspaper or website. Your classroom instructor may also have suggestions for you as to appropriate texts to analyze. After selecting your text and critically reading it, you will determine the writer’s purpose and intended audience for the text.

Once you have determined these elements, you will begin to analyze the text so as to determine the specific strategies the writer uses to achieve his or her purpose and to meet the needs of the audience. For example, you might choose to look at such elements as the types of evidence a writer puts forward and how he or she does so. Ask yourself if the writer uses evidence from sources, or if he or she tells stories from personal experience. Examine the sentence structures and word choice. How do these contribute to the author’s purpose? Evaluate the overall tone of the text, and determine how it does or does not contribute to the way in which it communicates to its audience. After you determine what these strategies are, consider how well these strategies actually work. As a result of this assignment, you should be able to take these skills and transfer them to any reading you are asked to do in college, and you should see an improvement in your ability to read and comprehend any text.

Although this is an initial draft, it should be carefully edited and written in a professional tone. Please use MLA format for both your in-text citations and your works cited in this draft.

Your draft should be 1200 words in length.

• Discussion: The Importance of Critical Reading (Discuss Chapter 2 in textbook)
 - What can we evaluate in a rhetorical analysis?

 - Review PTIC
 - Discuss Rhetorical Analysis/PTIC, Ethos, Pathos, Logos, Rhetorical Strategies (using Chapter 2 in Textbook)
Ethos, Pathos, Logos:
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5QE7KV6gQY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImAD8BOBOhw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq_EZjhHaDY


• Critical Reading Activity – “Helicopter Parents” Article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37493795
(Annotate as a class)

• Critical Reading – Annotate Rest of Article in Groups/Apply PTIC and Mini-Rhetorical Analysis:
1. Consider how these annotations aid in understanding the piece. If they’re not, what annotations would be helpful?
2. Categorize, as specifically as possible, the annotations.
3. What do the various annotations do?
4. Present findings to class.

• Assign BA 3 (Due Friday at 11:59 p.m.):
Brief Assignment 3: Critical Reading

Reading 3: McWhorter, “Reading and Writing about Text” (available from E-Handbook site); E-Handbook Ch. 2c; Ch. 9; Textbook Ch. 4 Rhetorical Analysis p. 101-130

Objective: To demonstrate your ability to read critically and to effectively evaluate an article as potential source material for a college-level analysis assignment.

Purpose: To gain practice in evaluating sources, you’ll read and evaluate one article from the list provided below or an article specified by your instructor. Use the Guidelines for Evaluating Sources in Ch. 14c and 14d of The St. Martin’s Handbook to assist you in your evaluation.

Description: This is a two-part assignment. To complete the first part, go to the e-handbook site, enter Prep-U, and take the quiz labeled “First Reading Quiz.”

To complete part two of this assignment, first include your reading quiz score at the beginning of your assignment. Then, write an evaluation of the text you have chosen from the following list:
- MacNeil, Robert. “Do you Speak American?”First-Year Writing: Writing in the Disciplines. Boston: Pearson Custom, 2010. 313-323.

- Bryson, Bill. “Good English and Bad.” First-Year Writing: Writing in the Disciplines. Boston: Pearson Custom, 2010. 330-338.

- Crystal, David. “Why a Global Language?” First-Year Writing: Writing in the Disciplines. Boston: Pearson Custom, 2010. 350-359.

Remember that you are looking at this text as if you were going to use it as your object of evaluation in your Draft 1.1. To that end, you’ll want to read carefully and pay particular attention to the rhetorical features of the text. Your evaluation should be approximately two paragraphs in length, or 400 – 500 words. Your audience for the evaluation is an individual whom you are trying to convince that the article you’re evaluating is a good one for the upcoming Draft 1.1 assignment.

• Look at samples of BA 3

Homework:
• BA3 (Reading Quiz 1, Rest of Assignment Listed Above)
• BA3 Readings (Reading 3: McWhorter, “Reading and Writing about Text” (available from E-Handbook site); E-Handbook Ch. 2c; Ch. 9; Textbook Ch. 4 Rhetorical Analysis p. 101-130)
• Review "Top Twenty" and "Comma Rules"