Category: Writing

Focusing Your Learning
Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Define the characteristics of a rhetorical analysis.
Examine sample rhetorical analysis essays.
Demonstrate the use of the writing process to develop a rhetorical analysis essay.
This lesson maps to the following course competencies:
Write for specific rhetorical contexts, including circumstance, purpose, topic, audience and writer, as well as the writing’s ethical, political, and cultural implications.
Organize writing to support a central idea through unity, coherence, and logical development appropriate to a specific writing context.
Use appropriate conventions in writing, including consistent voice, tone, diction, grammar, and mechanics.
Find, evaluate, select, and synthesize both online and print sources that examine a topic from multiple perspectives.
Integrate sources through summarizing, paraphrasing, and quotation from sources to develop and support one’s own ideas.
Identify, select, and use an appropriate documentation style to maintain academic integrity.
Instruction
Vocabulary toolkit
Select the following link to access the Lesson Five StudyBlue resources. For those who prefer working in hardcopy, here is a copy of the triple-entry vocabulary journal PDF for Lesson 5.
The following words are defined in your readings and in the lesson below. Use your StudyBlue account or your vocabulary journal to keep track of these words in each lesson. You will have the opportunity to practice these terms in a game in the Summarizing Your Learning portion of the lesson.
Rhetorical Analysis
Critical Inquiry
context
A
rhetorical analysis
is a form of argument that involves both critical thinking and research. You will be asked to use your knowledge of audience appeals (ethos, pathos and logos), as well as your understanding of fallacies and the rhetorical situation in writing this essay. If you feel you need to review any of these, please review Lessons 2, 3, and 4 before writing.
This lesson will step you through the stages of completing a rhetorical analysis.
What is a Rhetorical Analysis?
A rhetorical analysis requires you to apply your critical reading skills in order to break down a text. The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to articulate HOW the author writes by discussing the strategies the author uses to achieve his or her goal or purpose of writing his or her piece. This will include strategies used to attract the audience (like the rhetorical situation) as well as the classical appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos). Along the way, stay critical—your thesis will encapsulate your judgment of the piece, and you will need evidence to point toward the success or failure of the item you’re analyzing.
The good news is that you’ve already been through two similar exercises.
In Lesson 2 when you were asked to fill out the chart about a media object, you conducted a rhetorical analysis, only the pieces for analysis were provided for you in the chart.
In Lesson 3, when you were asked to annotate a visual using VoiceThread, you also conducted a mini-rhetorical analysis using a guiding set of questions.
For your essay, you will be asked to
formulate your own questions
in response to a text. “Rhetorical Appeals” covers strategies on how to pose productive questions and conduct a textual analysis.
While you will be able to choose your own focus, there will be a couple of basic parameters.
First,
your essay will need to include one outside source in addition to the text itself.
Second
, whatever you write about should ideally relate to the subject you plan to delve into. You might want to browse the upcoming units to help inspire you.
Third,
make sure to keep things clean—publication is part of the writing process, so any item you analyze should be publishable and researchable.
Some Samples
At this point, stop and read Bok’s “Protecting Freedom of Expression at Harvard” and the sample summary/analysis of Bok’s article if you have not already done so. These essays represent an original article (Bok’s) and a student analysis of its main ideas. Also note how the summary in the sample
differs
from the analysis.
As you read, take notice—the student’s summary is quite different from the analysis. Mistaking summary for analysis is a common mistake on this essay, but summarizing the article can be an excellent pre-writing activity. Notice how the student focuses on word choice. As such, he pulls select quotes from Bok’s article for further analysis and comments on those areas where Bok’s article is lacking. Notice how he supports his critiques. It is not enough to state that Bok’s article is weak because of his choice of words; instead, he states the effect of that omission (“Bok’s tone sounds almost apologetic and thus ruins the major warrant of his claim.”).
After you read the student’s response to Bok’s ideas, consider one of the other samples linked under “Readings, Resources, and Assignments.” Both of these have been published on the Internet by writing teachers because they were excellent assignments. Can you see the strengths of the sample you choose?
After you have read these samples, you should go back and review the comments made on your earlier assignments. If any weaknesses in your analysis were discussed, make sure you understand them before proceeding. If so, this would be a great time to pause and send your instructor an email!
Writing a Rhetorical Analysis
The first step is to find something you’d like to write about.
Appropriate topics might include:
a verbal, written, or visual argument that evokes a personal reaction in you. This might be something you’ve read in another class, something you saw on the news, or something you came across the Internet.
a current event or subject that you want to learn more about
a text that you feel has been misread or misinterpreted
Once you have your object of analysis and have done some research to help find evidence, you will want to focus your efforts:
READ
your text carefully, and at least a couple of times to ensure that you fully understand what you have read. Can you see the author’s thesis?
Next, start to
analyze
the features of the text you’re analyzing. Keep the following questions in mind as you read:
Who is the author? Does s/he have credibility to discuss the topic? Is there apparent bias? Is an institution sponsoring him/her, and if so, what does that institution represent?
What is the thesis, and what is the overall argument the author presents?
What did the author choose to study? Why?
What is the writer’s purpose? To inform? To persuade? To criticize?
Who is the author’s intended audience? Does s/he appeal to a resistant audience? A neutral audience? Or is s/he “preaching to the choir?”
What appeal(s) are applied (ethos, pathos, logos, or a combination)?
How does the writer arrange his or her ideas? Does the author use inductive or deductive reasoning in structuring the argument?
Did you note any fallacies as you read? If so, which ones?
How does the writer use diction? (Word choice, arrangement, accuracy, is it formal, informal? Technical versus slang?)
Does the writer use dialogue? Quotations? Statistics? Why?
What have others said about this text? Some databases like Opposing Viewpoints will automatically share related articles. If you find an article online, you can search for more information (for example, the student with an interest in video games might search Video Game Violence Reactions).
Please note: If your essay
just
answers these questions, it will not get a good grade! These questions are designed to be a guide for note taking! Not every question will apply to every analysis, and you may find other appropriate questions to ask that are specific to your selection.
Focusing Your Essay
Now that you have your subject of analysis (your text), have done some background research, and have analyzed your text, it’s time to write your thesis. Here’s the trick: It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with the message in your text… your thesis should focus on its strategy.
Focus on rhetorical features:
“The article titled ‘Video Games Violence is Overblown’ initially attracts an audience through its use of logos, but when the facts turn to editorial ranting, the argument degrades to a mess of fallacies including ad hominem attacks against video game producers that render the overall argument ineffective.”
Focus on interaction of elements:
“The ad makes impressive use of visual appeals to pathos by rallying the audience to come together using a sympathetic image, by creating a strong tagline that is easy to remember, by crafting inspiring verbiage, and by providing resources to take further action.”
Focus on audience:
“While some would argue that a segment found on Fox News’ YouTube channel would show bias against Democrats, this particular segment does an impressive job of reaching out to a resistant audience by stating statistics (including statistics that make the Republican side look bad), using impartial language, and avoiding headlines or imagery that could be seen as ‘attacking’ the opposing view.”
This can be a tricky step, so make sure to save time to draft and revise accordingly to make sure your thesis matches what you truly wish to argue.
Practice Activity
See if you can determine which of the following statements focus on rhetorical features and which do not. To see the right answer, click the word Answer.
The author designs a visual argument rooted in ethos to argue that the internet should be more highly regulated to prevent instances of cyber bullying. Answer
The internet provides many conveniences for its users. Answer
By combining frightening music with an impressive series of facts, the YouTube video’s main idea is that standardized testing will most likely continue to be a tool for

Students have to comprehend what they are reading in order to understand the new ideas and concepts presented in textbooks. When they don’t understand the material, it’s easy for them to lose interest in the subject and that has a negative impact on their learning. Two strategies that can be implemented to help students comprehend the material in the textbooks are:
1) Do a mini-lesson or pre-teach academic vocabulary found in the text. Understanding how phrases connect to each other is crucial for understanding the main points of texts; understanding the meaning of common transitions will help ELLs comprehend texts in all their subjects, not just one particular subject.
2) Provide an outline of the most important or main ideas before reading the text. This will help ELLs focus on what is important for them to know in the text; a teacher can leave space for students to fill in details about each section on the outline.
Frequent check-ins will spot students who don’t understand the material or are confused about it and will prevent them from getting completely lost with the text; by checking often, misunderstandings can be addressed sooner and more easily than by waiting until the end of a chapter or unit, at which point much more time might be needed to unravel the lack of understanding or confusion.
Jana Echevarría and Anne Graves. (2014). Sheltered Content Instruction: Teaching English Learners with Diverse Abilities. Published by Pearson Learning Solutions. Retrieved from https://viewer.gcu.edu/FQJCVM
Comment as you see fit. Min 40 word or more

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Comment as you see fit. Min 40 words or more

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