Paper #1 – Rhetorical Analysis

Draft Due via CTools (in your drop box) by 10:00 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 29

Bring two hard copies of your draft to class

Write an essay (3 pages) in which you analyze and evaluate the rhetorical strategies employed by Lewis Thomas, Randy Moore, or Barbara Sharf. What was the author’s purpose in writing his or her paper, and what strategies did he or she use to achieve it? Is the article or essay likely to be entirely persuasive to its intended audience? Why or why not?

Imagine that the audience for which you are writing includes people who have not read the text you are analyzing. Provide enough information about its thesis and content to allow those readers to understand what you have to say. Imagine, too, that the author whose work you are writing about is likely to read your paper some day. Think of yourself as that writer’s peer and potential colleague. Try to represent his or her work as fairly as possible, and to say something that would be interesting for the writer to read, in the sense that it might give him or her something new to think about.

Criteria for Evaluation

1.   Develop a specific, contestable thesis.

2.   Support claims and interpretations through analysis and examples, including direct quotations where appropriate.

3.   Answer the “So what?” question.

4.   Use correct grammar, word choice, sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation.

5.   Use MLA formatting and citation style; include a “works cited” page.