The Essay Two Assignment and How it all works?

In this assignment we are given the opportunity to do a rhetorical analysis of someone's viewpoint on a debatable topic. During this process we will be analyzing their writing process and use of Rhetoric as well as how effective their argument is. Through making this analysis we are given the opportunity to learn ways to make stronger arguments ourselves.
In our essay assignment first we have to select a writing that was made to persuade our opinion on a particular topic. In our reading of this, we have to determine how strong was their argument? Did it sway our opinion on the subject and to what degree? After giving a brief summary in our essay of the article we have chosen, we then have to share our own feelings on the strength of their argument and it's effect on us. Then in the body of our essay, we have to break down the arguments or other important points from their writing and how it affected their overall persuasiveness in their article.
In this opportunity to break down someone else's rhetoric, we will be given insight into how our own use of rhetoric can be better improved or used more effectively in different situations of our writing. Through this effective learning from other's example or possibly from other's mistakes, we will become more equipped in our writing to use the available tools to move our audiences to a greater degree.

Writing and Rhetoric and CLTs, Oh My!

Rhetoric is defined as "the art or skill of speaking or writing formally and effectively especially as a way to persuade or influence people"(merriam-webster dictionary) as well as being defined by Aristotle as “the faculty of observing in each case the available means of persuasion”(Sentell, 2013) Content Lexical Ties are defined as were explained in our video for this week as words that "tie" together content. In our review of the analysis written by Tim Collins for the British paper, The Guardian, of the speech given by Marie Fatayi-Williams, there were many examples of each. Collins in his introductory paragraph points out the pathos used by Marie in her appeal to the values of her audience. Later in his writing, Collins explains how ethos was used by Marie when describing her words as being as free from hatred as they were from self interest. Collins also used many content lexical ties (CLTs) in his writing as well. He often compares Marie’s speech to that of Shakespeare as well as to Churchill, Lincoln, and an address at the steps of the gallows. Later in his fourth paragraph he likens her language to verses of the bible. In his fifth paragraph he compares Marie herself to a knighted veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company. In his sixth paragraph he speaks of Marie’s appeal to her audience as important and momentous. In his analysis of Marie’s speech, Tim Collins showed both the rhetoric of her speech as well as used CLTs to convey his own feeling about the speech as well as the speaker. It is obvious from the way he describes Marie and her message that her speech moved him as much as it did the nation that had just undergone such a horrible meaningless tragedy. 

Tim Collins and Analysis of Marie Fatayi-Williams' speech.

In our textbook reading for this week, we were given the keys to rhetorical analysis. These six steps are identify the purpose, examine the audience, examine the author, examine the larger context, examine the rhetorical appeals, and examine the language and style. We were also shown the six steps needed for a good rhetorical analysis. These steps are: Find an interesting topic, Write a descriptive title and precise thesis, Analyze the immediate context, Analyze the larger context, Analyze the appeals used, and Analyze the language and style. In his analysis and commentary of Marie's speech, Mr. Collins did an excellent job of performing an analysis.

1. Finding an interesting topic. 
With the current events of the bombing of the number 30 bus and Marie's son becoming missing, this story was on the public's mind. Tim also showed his connection to this story by relating it to himself  before the invasion of Iraq.

2. Write a descriptive title and precise thesis statement.
Tim identified his subject in the first sentence of his review. His topic of "Straight from the Heart" showed the depth of emotion that was shown in Marie's speech and gave his audience a glimpse of the rhetorical appeals she would use.

3. Analyze the immediate content.
He was quick to identify his author as Mrs. Fatayi-Williams and the audience was the public there morning the loses of the people on the number 30 bus. He then went into the back story of Marie and her son and their travels from Africa in search of a better life.

4. Analyze the larger context.
He was restricted in this aspect because few would be commenting on the loss of Marie's son. He did make mention of her becoming an icon associated with the bombing that happened just a few days previously.

5. Analyze the appeals used.
This was done beginning with his topic showing the overwhelming use of pathos, she also uses ethos by showing her role as Anthony's mother, and logos, with her arguments about what the real purpose of terrorism was.

6. Analyze the language and style
Collins cited this as one of the primary aspects of her speech. Her personalizing of these historic events and showing the human cost of these actions spoke volumes to her audience. She seemed to speak directly to all her audience, either by comfort of their lose, as a warning to leaders, or as condemnation to the terrorists themselves.

As we can see Tim Collins followed each of these steps and showed his knowledge of a proper and effective analysis. His respectful breakdown of Marie's speech not only showed respect to her son, and her for her lose, but also to her audience and how this tragedy effected them as well. In conclusions I feel he did a very good job in this analysis of a very moving speech.   

Is There Writing After 35 or A Self Review?

For the majority of my life I have suffered from a perfectionist spirit about my work. I have always striven to do my best and always look  for any opportunity to do just a bit better on something I have done before. Because of this mentality, when I do complete a task I am usually very proud of my work and feel it is the best I am capable of. This is how I felt when I completed my draft of out first essay assignment. These feelings of pride and excellent work quickly diminished though as I began the process of the self review questions. 

Question two asked, " What is the paper's thesis statement?" I thought that's simple it's...... never actually stated. In all of my concern and care about making sure I covered all the areas that were written out in the assignment document, I completely forgot to consider the audience I was writing for. In this oversight I formed my writing in more of an informal style than the thesis and supporting point approach that was being questioned about in this review.

I first told myself, Do Not Panic! Realizing this was the whole purpose of doing this self review. Knowing what was desired from this writing and where I am so far, I now had a destination and a starting point. Knowing where I need to go with this assignment at least gave me an opportunity to improve on my writing and to avoid making the same mistakes on future assignments. I am currently in the process of revising my draft and am hoping through the clarification of my thesis statement and development of my supporting arguments that I can regain the pride and confidence I had when I first wrote it. 

Writing from my point of view and others

I thought my writing style was concreted by this point in my life. As I read about how others in this class go about their writing and the techniques they use, I realized I not only had ways I could improve on my writing style but found ways to simplify my sometimes complicated approach. Many of my fellow classmates and myself begin their writing by brainstorming. Katie introduced me to the idea of breaking this brainstorming down into smaller steps or questions to simplify it and open ourselves up to new or different ideas. Dr Sentell also mentioned in his comments that sometimes it's important to look at the smaller details instead of the bigger picture to avoid becoming overwhelmed and getting mentally blocked by it.

My next step in my writing is to arrange these ideas into my topic or thesis, my supporting points, and supporting information of those points. In the past I have always went about this through the use of an outline. Again I took a helpful point from Katie's writing approach of using the umbrella technique over the outline. This more fluid approach allows for easier rearrangement of ideas and grouping of supporting information together. Below is an example of how this umbrella approach wold look.

Now it is time to begin the actually writing part of our assignment. I have always jumped head long into my writing. I developed an introduction to my information then proceeded down the points in my outline and their supporting points, until I have covered all my outlined information. From reading about Tyler's approach though I realized it wasn't as much about my writing at this point as it was about my environment. He suggested to remove all distractions from around me to help to better focus on the task at hand. Although Katie mentioned putting something on television that she has seen numerous times before, I am more of the mindset of Tyler that regardless of the nature of outside stimulus, I would be distracted from my writing and topic. 

The final step in my writing process is rereading my draft and proofreading for spelling or grammatical error as well as sentences that are hard to understand or follow. Like many of my peers I have been lucky enough to have someone in my life who is willing to read my writing and give me constructive criticism and ideas on how to improve the writing itself as well as to help work out areas that are disruptive to the flow of my writing. After this last review, My writing is finally complete.

Temple Grandin and her mastery of Logos, Pathos, and Ethos

Since my son's diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, I have had an extensive hunger for information related to it and other areas of the Autism spectrum. Temple Grandin, has been a pioneer in understanding people in this spectrum and in helping others to better understand how Autistic people thing and perceive the world.

In her writing in the article "This issue we're thinking about..." she uses the persuasive techniques of Logos, Pathos, and Ethos to teach her audience about Autistic people and their perception of the world and also draws an emotional response from the non autistic people in the audience to want to learn more about this and to be active in their education about Autism.

Temple demonstrates  Ethos with the fact she has lived with Autism for her entire life and through her own understanding of it, she has a first hand ability to teach others about what it is like. She explains how she has never thought in words or ideas but instead see pictures in her head that she has associated with ideas. When Someone says horse, she sees numerous pictures of horses in her mind instead of just thinking of the word horse as many non-autistic people do.

Next she demonstrates Pathos by helping non-autistic people to put themselves in the shoes of an autistic person and experience the trials they have with innocuous situations or activities. Through helping to develop this connection and understanding between the non-autistic and autistic persons, she helps them to become more emotionally invested in Autism and the understanding of it. By forming this emotional connection to Autistic people, she helps to encourage people to become more proactive in their help for Autistic people and in their teaching them how to use this as more of a positive than negative effect in their lives.

Dr. Grandin uses Logos in her description of what it is like to live with Autism, thus helping people to go from once conclusion to the next to form their own personal understanding of what it is like to live with Autism. She uses logic and simple steps to change the way that people view the environment they are in to briefly see things as an autistic person does. She then takes this a step farther and helps them to learn how through seeing the world this way, how they can use this as a talent in their careers and future life choices to actually become better than the average person at some tasks. An example of this is in her description of Autistic people who are pattern thinking minds being more advanced in understanding of Geometry and mathematical patterns than the average non-autistic person.

Through Dr. Grandin's use of these three persuasion techniques, primarily Ethos and Pathos, she is able to help people not only learn about Autistic people and to put themselves in their shoes for a brief moment, but also instills a hunger for more information related to this field of study. If this interests you, I encourage you to read any of her numerous books, or watch the Temple Grandin story movie. 

Logos, Pathos, & Ethos and what it all means to you

As illustrated above Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are not Greek adventurers, but rather approaches to persuasion with our writing. Through knowing not only what these are, but how they work we can become more effective in our writing and in forming a connection with our audiences. Through the use of all three of these techniques we can approach our topic of persuasion from many different angles and become much more effective in the process.
Ethos is an appeal achieve through the use of our credibility based on our experience, knowledge, or character. Pathos is an appeal based on emotion. This can be done through the use of concrete language or stories. We have to have an understanding of what evokes these emotion in our audience to be the most effective at this style. Logos is persuasion through the use of logic. There are two main variation of this syllogism and enthymeme. Syllogism uses a progression of logic that leads from one logical point to another, while enthymeme uses unstated premise assuming the audience can understand the logical like from one argument to another.

Knowledge of these three techniques will help us become more effective speakers and writers, and give us a more extensive toolkit to appeal to our audiences with. Through learning how to effectively persuade our audiences through all three of these techniques, enables you to vary your approaches to an argument and to come at it from different angles increasing the effectiveness of your argument.

Adaptation of writing for the Audience.

                                                   
As Dr. Sentell mentioned in his video, know the audience, be the audience. To interest an audience about a purpose, if we have knowledge of this audience, we will be able to relate the information more directly to themselves and their lives. If you were speaking at the VMAs or in front of the Senate, you would obviously vary your approach to the information to make it more relative to that audience. To make information more interesting to an audience, it has to be in the vernacular of that audience, and something they can apply to their lives or that is related to them.  

Through the use of thesis statements and PEE structure, this relation to the audience is achieved with academic audiences. The thesis statement helps the audience to know what to expect from the rest of your discourse. It gives them the points you are trying to prove or convey, and peaks their interest for the rest of your discourse. Using PEE structure helps identify the points that relate to your thesis statement that you wish to convey to your audience. It then provides evidence for these points to support them and your thesis. Finally it relates this information to your thesis and your audience to encourage an interest in them about your purpose. 

Writing from my point of view

My writing process varies slightly depending on the subject. Usually I start with my topic and then list points that I feel are important to the ideas or thoughts I am trying to convey to my audience. I then list points about each of these ideas that help explain them and further my message. Afterwards I take these ideas and sort them into a logical order so that they flow from a beginning to end smoothly. Once I have these ideas sorted into their proper places, I am now ready to begin my writing. This set up procedure might seem like a waste of time and many prefer to just jump in and start writing, but preparation is extremely important to writing a clear concise article. As the old saying goes, failure to plan is a plan to fail. Here is a general idea of how this outline is set up.

As I begin my writing, in the first paragraph of the article I want to introduce to my audience, the general idea or ideas I am wanting to share. Wetting their appetite, so to speak, can peak their interest in what I wanted to share and encourage more intent reading of the rest of my writing. After this introductory paragraph, I begin with discussing the first sub topic in my outline. Using the subsequent topics under it, I explain the topic, it's relevance to my overall subject, and important information concerning it. I do this with the next subtopic and work my way down the outline until I have shared all the information I had outlines. As a conclusion, my final paragraph needs to recap the main ideas of my article and tie them into my overall subject.

An important step that is often overlooked is thorough proofreading of your writing after conclusion. I usually prefer to take a break before this to clear my mind. In my proofreading, I not only look for grammatical and spelling errors, but also check that my information is clear and understandable for my audience. Sometimes adding more explanation or removing run on explanations are necessary for a better flow of information. I have been lucky enough in the past to have a english major girlfriend who was willing to read over my writing and give me candid tips for improving and clarifying it.