In English 1613, you wrote a rhetorical analysis which focused on how a text (article, commercial, speech, image, etc.) used ethos, pathos, and logos in order to appeal to its intended audience. This paper starts from that foundation but pushes the analysis further into issues of style such as diction, tone, syntax, etc.
You must analyze ONE of the following articles for this paper:
What GenEd Courses Contribute to Essential LOs.pdf (The Journal of Higher Education)
Who Should Teach GenEd Courses.pdf (Peer Review)
Multi-Faculty Collaboration to Design Online General Studies Courses (Faculty Focus)
The General Education Curriculum We Need (Insider Higher Ed)
The Minimum Requirements for the Article Analysis Paper
You are required to write at least 1500 words (though it may be a bit longer than that due to the amount of content you have to cover). You may not write over 2000 words for this assignment. Please note that works cited/reference pages do not count toward minimum length requirements and block quotes (quotes of four lines of text or longer) may not be used in papers for this class without my prior permission. When block quotes are approved and used, they do not count towards page length.
You are required to analyze ONE of the articles the instructor has provided to you in this description. You will need to use specific textual examples from your selected article to support your analysis of the writing style and conventions found within it. The textual examples you use will need to be properly cited in MLA style in the text and on a works cited page.
You are also required to research the publication (i.e., the journal or magazine) that the article is found within to discover more about the discourse community that it is part of. A publication’s website often provides information about its editorial policy, goals/aims, and so forth that can help you analyze the article’s writing style and conventions, too. When you summarize the information you found regarding the publication in your paper, you must cite the source in the text and on the works cited page.
If you want to use additional sources beyond the article and publisher website, you are free to do so.
Required Outline
Please note that the sections listed below are not necessarily paragraph designations. While you may have one paragraph for the introduction and one paragraph for the conclusion, you will not have only one paragraph for the body of the paper.
Introduction
Be sure to introduce the publication (the journal or magazine that published your article). Provide the publication’s title (in italics) and briefly summarize the purpose of the publication and describe its primary intended audience – the discourse community that it’s a part of. Remember that an intended audience is a specific subset of the population – there is no such thing as a “general audience” or an “audience of everyone”. Be sure to cite your sources for any direct quotes and any information you’ve paraphrased that’s not common knowledge.
Briefly introduce the specific article that you’ll be analyzing: e.g., What is the title (in quotation marks)? Who wrote it? What’s its main thesis?
Conclude this section with your claim about the OVERALL effectiveness of the author’s writing style.
Body (Where you get into the details of your analysis!)
Include one, short and concise, body paragraph for each of the three appeals: ethos, pathos, logos. Each of these three body paragraphs must include an analysis of how the appeal is developed in the article AND a statement regarding the effectiveness of the appeal for the intended audience. You might find that the length of your paragraph for each appeal is dependent upon the significance of that appeal in the particular text; this is fine. If logos is almost absent from the article, it may only take you a handful of sentences to state this and explain why. Conversely if the article relies heavily on pathos, you may find that paragraph is pushing a full page in length to give you the time necessary to explain the use and provide examples.
Now, write 3 body paragraphs in which you analyze specific stylistic features (diction, tone, syntax, organization, imagery, etc.). Each of these body paragraphs must include an analysis of the style concern (e.g. what type of diction is used and how do you know) is developed in the article AND an analysis of the effectiveness for the intended audience (e.g. why the use of imagery is important for this specific audience). Choose the 3 elements of style that are most obvious or important within the article.
NOTE – this means your paper will include 6 body paragraphs: ethos, pathos, logos, style 1, style 2, and style 3
Conclusion
Your conclusion should include your final reflections on the author’s stylistic and rhetorical devices as well as the publication’s typical writing conventions. Do you think the article’s overall writing style would appeal to its intended readership? In what ways yes? Are there any aspects of the style that you think might be less successful appealing to scholars or professionals in the discipline or profession? Why so? What are the benefits and potential drawbacks to this style as a reader? As a writer?
Academic Dishonesty
As with all assignments in this course, any instance of cheating will result in zero points on the assignment. Instances of intentional cheating, as determined by the instructor – may result in failing the course and being reported to the college. Cheating includes copying from online or print sources, using another person’s paper or part of a paper, using AI to write all or part of your paper, failing to cite sources in text and/or on a works cited page, or using a paper you have written for another class, among others. For the full Academic Dishonesty policy, see the Course Syllabus.
SimCheck (Turnitin)
This dropbox uses SimCheck (Turnitin) to check your work for language highly similar to that found online and within other student paper submissions. This program also detects the use of AI to generate papers.
You’ll be able to access the Similarity Report very soon after submitting your paper, so you’ll be able to see the same report that I will. I use these similarity reports to make sure that students are appropriately indicating any direct quotes (by means of quotation marks) and correctly citing outsides sources used in the paper.
You can visit the Turnitin website for more information on SimCheck (including instructions on how to access and interpret your Similarity Score).
Submission Requirements
Submit your final Article Analysis Paper (as a Word document file) to this dropbox by the due date. Make sure you are meeting the Minimum Requirements for Grading prior to submission
