ENG 104 Sections 572 & 573
Instructor: Kim Wells

Assignment

(500-800 words, 1 source from Motives for Writng that we have not yet or will not in the future read as a class, "Works Cited" page). Do not analyze one of the fiction, drama or poetry pieces in the last chapter. FYI: Percentage of final grade: 10 %.

DUE DATES

First draft for peer review: Wednesday September 29^th.

Final Draft: Friday October 8.

Objective:

• To write a well-developed and grammatically correct analysis of the persuasive techniques in an essay, letter, speech or other piece of writing. Now that you have practiced close reading, you should be ready to put it to use in the form of a close analysis. In this essay, you will analyze an essay, examining and evaluating it for effective use of persuasive (what some call rhetorical) techniques. Be sure to consider the author's ethos, pathos, logos. You will also want to watch for logical fallacies-- if an essay contains these poor forms of argument, then it will make an important point for consideration for your "job."
• To do this assignment, you must be able to assume a detached perspective, analyzing how well (and how) the author addresses an audience that may very well not include the student reader. You will need to use your basic vocabulary of persuasive (or rhetorical) techniques. There is no given, widely accepted, comprehensive set of techniques that should always be used in rhetorical analysis. But there are many techniques from classical rhetoric that have been used for centuries and some from modern rhetoric that should prove useful. Consider how the writer(s) of the essay you review/analyze use rhetorical strategies on every level (word choice, sentence or paragraph length or structure, essay organization, content, figures of speech, etc.) to persuade a given audience in a given time and place.

Rhetorical Situation

Each year, thousand of anthologies similar to Motives for Writing are published. The editors of these thousands of anthologies look through thousands of essays to determine which ones will be included in their anthology. Imagine that you have been hired to assist an editor who is compiling an anthology of excellent argumentative essays for a first-year writing course. You are required to write a report on one of the essay your boss is reviewing. Present an unbiased and professional analysis of the essay, summarizing its main arguments and assessing its writer's use of both effective and ineffective persuasive techniques. Based on this analysis and on your experience in English 104, provide a recommendation for the inclusion or disqualification of the essay for the English 104 anthology of effective arguments.

Paper #3 requires you to do the following:

• Summarize the writer's perspective on an issue (what the writer has to say-the essay's main points)
• Analyze the persuasive techniques the writer uses to affect/influence an audience (how the writer makes his/her points)
• Describe which techniques contribute to the piece's effectiveness and which, if any, detract from it. (This section is where your judgment and evaluation comes in describe what is effective or ineffective.)

Your summary of the writer's perspective should constitute roughly 1/4 of your report and include direct quotation. Your analysis and description of persuasive techniques should make up roughly 3/4 of your report and include summary, paraphrase, and direct quotation. In your thesis statement you will specify which persuasive techniques you plan to discuss and indicate the effectiveness of these techniques in relation to the larger rhetorical context-audience, purpose, subject.

Documentation: Papers must be typed and follow MLA guidelines for documentation. You must include a properly formatted works cited page in this assignment.

For fun: What kind of persuasive technique(s) does the cartoon below rely on? (Hint: what is a non-sequiter?)
From the Non Sequiter Online Archives: www.wileytoons.com.