The Rhetorical Analysis essay assignment will give you the opportunity to now put all of the learning about rhetorical techniques used to persuade the audience to use in your paper. Remember that you will be analyzing the persuasiveness of the piece of writing OR the TedTalk and not whether or not you agree with the argument. Analysis of this type is really an important step to the ongoing process of being a critical reader and thinker when it comes to the world around you and its influence on you. You will be assessing how well and with which techniques the author or presenter chooses to share information to succeed in persuading you.
This activity is designed to support the following Learning Objectives:
Develop cogent arguments that are free of logical fallacies and demonstrate a logical organizational structure.
Formulate provocative arguments in reaction to the texts.
Synthesize source material in formal essays through paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting.
Document sources using MLA and/or another universally accepted style of documentation.
You will write a Rhetorical Analysis essay of the OpEd piece (“Covid Prescription: Get the Vaccine, Wait a Month, Return to Normal”) OR the TedTalk (“My Stroke of Insight”) below.
Covid Prescription: Get the Vaccine, Wait a Month, Return to Normal (Links to an external site.) : https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-prescription-get-the-vaccine-wait-a-month-return-to-normal-11615401516
An Idea Worth Spreading: My Stroke of Insight (Links to an external site.)
You will be assessing how persuasive the writing OR the presentation of the TedTalk is based on rhetorical techniques that you list as sub-points in your thesis. Your thesis will also make a claim about the persuasiveness of the OpEd piece OR TedTalk as connected to the rhetorical techniques that you identify in the thesis sub-points and then develop in the paper body.
Paper Requirements:
Title
Four full, typed, double-spaced pages (1000 words)
Intro paragraph with hook and thesis.
Summary of OpEd piece OR TedTalk in first body paragraph.
Supportive body paragraphs with transitions within and between.
Actual quotes from the OpEd piece OR TedTalk properly integrated into the paper body(signal phrases and AXES) to help with your argument about persuasiveness. **Include time stamp following source material for the TedTalk: (00:15:30) for example.
Use of AXES method of incorporating source material.
**Optional counterargument where a weaker or stronger (depending on your argument) part of the OpEd piece OR TedTalk is covered.
Concluding paragraph.
*Optional second source
Works Cited page.
MLA formatting.
