Download English 1002 Group Presentation Assignment: Rhetorical Analysis

English 1002 Group Presentation Assignment: Rhetorical Analysis
Introduction:
In this course, you’ll write many arguments. One way to develop your skill at making arguments is to
develop the skill of analyzing the arguments of others. In this assignment, you will analyze an argument,
trying to understand the elements of its rhetoric.
This will be a group effort, creating a presentation for the class; either a powerpoint or a video that is
uploaded to the Discussion Board by Wednesday, and will be viewed and receive feedback from your
classmates by Friday.
Overview of assignment
For this assignment, each group will select an argument from an essay in the text to analyze in terms of
rhetorical strategy and components.
Basis of Your Analysis
Since a rhetorical analysis requires you to talk in detail about an argument, you’ll need to use certain
technical terms to explain how arguments work. Reading Critically, Writing Well discusses a variety of
terms in the Appendix 1: A Catalog of Reading Strategies: the rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos);
logical fallacies; enthymemes (understanding major premise, minor premise, conclusion); Toulmin
analysis: grounds, warrants and claims; stasis theory. That’s a lot to cover, and your presentations won’t
discuss every example of each of these. Part of the challenge of the presentation will be to decide what
the most salient elements of the arguments are and what rhetorical terms best describe the argument;
learning how to limit the scope of your argument is a skill you will need to develop in your academic
career.
Organization of the Presentation
Another challenge in the presentation will be deciding how to organize the information. The two most
logical ways to organize are 1. by rhetorical topic and 2. following the order of the argument. Which
organization you select will depend on the argument itself and how it is structured.
One thing you’ll discover quickly as you analyze your essay is that appeals don’t often fall neatly into just
one category. For example, the quotation of statistics from a published, credible source will certainly be
an appeal from logos, but since it also contributes to the credibility of the author, it is an appeal from
ethos as well. In preparing your presentation, you will want to both note the richness of such appeals
(“the author has crafted the argument carefully”) but you won’t want to repeat yourself, so it will be
necessary for you to craft a streamlined analysis.
Presentation Content
I.MLA Citation: correctly cite the article
II. Important Information:
1. What is the main idea (Mention the topic and the author’s claim about it).
2. Who is the intended audience? What are some of the writer’s assumptions about the reader,
about his ethics, about his values, and about the issues?
3. What is the author’s purpose or motivation for writing his/her argument?
4. What is the author’s bias? Cite examples from the article to support your evaluation.
lll. Summarize the article (in detail) using your own words (Chunk the article into sections to help you).
Write “What does it say?” for every paragraph.
IV. How is the essay organized? Determine a general pattern of organization that develops the
thesis. Give examples that support your analysis. For example, chronological order, cause & effect,
definition, explanation, evaluation, and compare & contrast are organizational patterns used to develop
arguments.
V.
How are ethos, logos, and pathos developed? Cite an example of each from the reading.
VI.
What role does the broader context (social, historical, cultural, and/or economic forces) play in
the creation and in the implications of the article?
VII. Evaluate the supporting details – Are they sufficient? True? Verifiable? Prove why your
evaluation is valid.
VIII. Evaluate the logic and validity of the writer’s arguments by applying the structure of Toulmin
analysis. Do the author’s conclusions follow logically, and why do you think so? Are there any logical
fallacies or missing pieces in the author’s arguments; what are they? Could the argument be made
stronger?
Respond to the issue and to the author’s arguments. DO NOT SIMPLY agree OR DISAGREE.
Challenge the author’s assumptions, view point, arguments, and facts. Pretend you could ask the
author questions; what would you ask?
IX.
Group Work
Group work requires patience and cooperation. You will use the wiki in Blackboard and the collaborative
tools to communicate with your group members and exchange files.
Some guidelines for group work
The hardest part of group work is project management and personalities. You should appoint a project
leader and assign tasks. The group will need to fully understand the argument and how to analyze it,
design the presentation and plan a schedule for getting the work done; the project leader should help
each member of the team understand how all these elements fit together.
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Encourage debate, invite everyone to contribute ideas, read each member’s posts, and treat the
project as team property not just as individual effort
Create detailed outline for work – you can use this three-step approach:
1. Select group leader, assign tasks, sketch outline, begin content creation, generate ideas,
plan strategy
2. Review work done independently, generate new ideas and plan strategy for next round
of work, and draft the presentation/discussion
3. Edit and prepare the final version, and review the presentation
4. Submit final version of your presentation through the Discussion Board link by
Wednesday, identifying your group by number, members, and essay analyzed.