Analyze an authors technique for establishing an opinion/argument and how effectively they persuade the reader to share their view.
Essay Details
You will analyze a text to closely examine both what the text says and how it says it. Your goal in analyzing any text is to demonstrate how it achieves its effects (by using logos, ethos, and pathos), and how successfully it achieves those effects. In this analysis, you will identify the authors rhetorical purpose and critique the article’s effectiveness.
Essay Requirements
–MLA 9 format. See the example provided in the Course Documents module. In particular, be sure to undo the default setting that adds an extra space each time you key enter/return. Even if your word processing program is set to double space, you MUST undo this default.
–2.5-3 pages (this means that the essay has at least 11 lines written on page 3, and it also means that the essay does not go on to page 4).
–The essay’s first sentence MUST mention the title of the article, the author’s name, and the date the article was published in The New York Times.
–Do not write a 3-part thesis.
–Do not write In conclusion before your final paragraph (or any form of the word conclude–now or ever, please).
–Do not announce what you or the essay will do: In this essay, I will discuss . . . This essay promises to explain . . .
–Do not feel bound by the 5-paragraph construct of essay writing. As a college student, you should understand when its appropriate and useful to end one paragraph and begin another. In real writing, one idea might be discussed in more than one paragraph.
–Do not use aggressively informal diction (remember your audience).
–This assignment does not have a point-of-view requirement, but I caution you to not slip perpetually into 2nd-person POV. Reading the word ‘you’ too many times in an essay sounds amateurish. Also, when offering in an opinion, it isn’t necessary to write I think, In my view, In my opinion, etc. Since you are the individual writing the essay, your audience understands that they are reading the author’s views.
–The Works Cited page must be properly formatted, including the URL from the database.
–The essay must include a minimum of five brief quotes from the article for support.
–The essay must NOT include any direct quotes that are longer than two lines of text.
Writing and Submitting the Essay
Step 1: Using the information, instructions, and resources found in this libguide (Links to an external site.), select an article from a recent The New York Times Opinion and Editorial (op-ed) section. The article must have been published in the last 30 days, and you MUST select an article from only this section of the newspaper using this database.
Step 2: Create a plan for the entire essay (see Discussion 7) in outline form.
This is what your essay (and essay plan) must include:
–A summary of the article that does not go beyond page 1. My recommendation is that the article summary is contained to the introductory paragraph. When you summarize, assume I have not read the article. You want to ensure that you convey the entire scope of the article, not merely part of the article. In so doing, you want to provide enough detail to present a clear articulation of the article. However, you should avoid unnecessary details.
–Analysis: The bulk of your essay should be analysis of the article, which consists of two parts.
Part 1: The first part of your analysis is to consider how the author makes the argument. You will make the rhetorical situation the focus of this section of the essay. Specifically, your essay should identify which rhetorical modes (ethos, pathos, logos) the author uses to persuade the reader to share their view. Related, this part of the analysis should mention who is the writer’s intended audience.
Part 2: The second part of the analysis is to consider how well the author presents their opinion. This part of the essay is your judgment of the effectiveness of the articles argument: Does it persuade? Why or why not? This judgment should be mentioned in the thesis that drives the essay. That is to say, your thesis should encapsulate your analysis of the article, both the how and the how well.
Here are 4 example thesis statements:
The author’s view on minimum wage is misguided due to their use of outdated statistics and misleading quotes.
By using humorous anecdotes and quotes from reliable sources, this article effectively convinces readers of the importance of earning a college degree.
This article’s stance on abortion relies too heavily on biased opinions to persuade the reader to share their view.
While this article meaningfully portrays issues with the electoral college system, the author comes up short when trying to offer an alternative to voting.
