Examining a Text’s Rhetorical Situation

Spring 2015, RWS 280, Writing Project #2:

Examining a Text’s Rhetorical Situation

 

Course Learning Objectives:

For this writing assignment, the major course learning objectives include

1. Developing an effective process of reading for comprehension.
2. Developing an effective writing process—including prewriting, drafting, revision, and self-evaluation.
3. Analyzing the elements of academic texts—particularly argument, genre, audience, context, purpose, and strategies.

 

Reading Selections:

Please select one of the following three texts to use as you complete Writing Project 2

1. Paul Krugman’s “Confronting Inequality,”
2. Constance M. Ruzich and A. J. Grant’s “Predatory Lending and the Devouring of the American Dream,”
3. Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union”

 

Prompt:

Building on our work in Writing Project 1 in which we developed an understanding of a few key conventions of academic writing—introducing a standard view and directly quoting outside sources—this assignment expects students to provide an account of a text’s argument, identifying and briefly analyzing a few of the selected argument’s key rhetorical elements (particularly important claims and prevalent types of support).

 

However, it goes a step further, for it also asks students to discern elements of context embedded in the argument to determine whose ideas may have prompted the author to join the conversation.

 

Moreover, this assignment expects students to conclude by evaluating how effectively the selected argument would persuade the intended audience of the selected text’s argument.

 

Criteria for Evaluation:

Successful papers will

1. Properly engage your audience, introduce the topic, and give some indication of how your paper will proceed;
2. examine the selected text’s argument, explaining the author’s message in enough detail to contextualize the text for your response’s reader; at the very least, this account should identify the central claim, one important sub-claim, and one prevalent type of support.
3. locate and identify elements of context within the selected argument that suggest whose ideas the author may be responding to;
4. assess the extent to which the selected text’s intended audience would have been persuaded by the argument made in it;
5. use an effective structure that carefully guides your reader from one idea to the next (and bear in mind that your reader is intelligent but unfamiliar with the argument);
6. be thoroughly edited so that sentences are readable & appropriate for academic papers;
7. and apply appropriate MLA citation and documentation style, including a Works Cited page.

 

Responses to this essay should be 4-5 pages in length. Although outside research is not necessary to complete this assignment, conducting brief, Internet-based research concerning the argument, its author, and its publication may facilitate successful completion of this writing project. Also, please adhere to MLA guidelines for format, style, citation, and documentation.

 

Readings and Due Dates:

We will be working with material from Chapters 4-7 of TSIS throughout this project. Please check Blackboard/Assignments/WP 2 Assignments for more information regarding the three “text options” for Writing Project 2. Also, specific information regarding due dates is available in the same Bb folder.