ENGL 1100 :- Rhetorical Analysis Assignment - English Research Paper

ENGL 1100: Introduction to University Writing (A44)   Rhetorical Analysis Assignment

Assignment Requirements:

• Length requirement: 800-1000 words (approximately three to four double-spaced pages with one-inch margins)please include the word count at the bottom of your assignment
• Other: works cited list that include bibliographic information for the two articles being analyzed

Guidelines:

In this paper, you will offer a formal rhetorical analysis that considers the effectiveness of the persuasive strategies used by the authors of one article in The Active Reader and one article published recently in a newspaper. Your main task will be to argue which article is more effective by explaining to readers how these authors make use of appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade their intended audiences.

In order to convince readers that your argument is accurate, you need to offer evidence from the articles to support your claims about their effectiveness. For this reason, we will spend quite a bit of time practicing quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing skills as well as discussing how to use material from sources in an ethical way. These lessons will be especially valuable to you in the research-based essay you will prepare as your final paper for this class.

Because this paper will include a number of different elements, you will need to think carefully about arrangement strategies. Will you discuss the use of ethos in both articles first, then pathos, then logos? Will you analyze the articles one at a time? Basically, this assignment is a compare/contrast essay, so we will spend time in class discussing how to organize such a paper, but you must decide what arrangement plan will work best for your articles.

Steps for completing this assignment:

You are required to read one of the following articles from The Active Reader:

• Article Choice #1: Royette Tavernier and Teena Willoughby, “Sleep problems: Predictor or outcome of media use among emerging adults at university”
• Article Choice, #2: Daniel J. Dutton, Norman R.C. Campbell, Charlene Elliot, and Lindsay McLaren, “A ban on marketing of foods/beverages to children: The who, why, what and how of a population health intervention”

Be prepared to summarize the central thesis and main ideas presented in your chosen article. Over the next several class sessions, we will work together as a class to analyze the rhetorical effectiveness of the authors’ arguments, especially considering how effectively the deployment of the three appeals might persuade the piece’s intended readers. You will want to take notes on this work, and you should draw upon what you learned from class discussions when preparing your rhetorical analysis essay.

As soon as possible, you should choose a newspaper article on a related topic. Select from the list below, find a copy of it using Summon:

Editorial Options for Choice #1:

• Alice G. Walton, “Social Media Use May Mess with Teens’ Sleep,” Forbes, 24 Oct. 2019
• Emily Vaughn, “More LOLs, Fewer Zzzs: Teens May Be Losing Sleep Over Social Media,” NPR, 22 Oct. 2019

Editorial Options for Choice #2:

• Tu Thanh Ha, “Treat Junk Food like Tobacco, OMA urges,” The Globe and Mail, 24 Oct. 2012
• Jennifer Sygo, “Why Weight?; New Childhood Obesity Study Confirms it’s Never Too Soon to Start Kids on a Path to Healthy Eating,” National Post, 4 Feb. 2014

Following the model analyses of the Active Reader articles we undertake in class, you should develop your own analysis of your newspaper article. Try to draft a summary of this editorial; a brief paragraph describing its intended audience; and a set of notes about its use of ethos, pathos, and logos. Consider carefully whether you think this piece would persuade its readers, pondering why or why not it seems effective.

To draft your rhetorical analysis essay, begin by writing a thesis that states which article is most effective. (Note that you can argue that neither piece is effective or that both are equally effective, if that seems to be the case.) Only then can you plan how best to prove this thesis to your readers

Note on the audience for this assignment:

You should assume that you are writing to an audience of professors and students interested in rhetoric. Since a discipline-specific academic group is the audience for whom many papers in university classes are written, your understanding of this type of (often imaginary) collection of readers will help you to prepare assignments for other courses.

Grading Rubric: