Module 2 Assignment Prompt
Background and Purpose
By now, you have seen the benefits of reading actively. Being able to read actively helps you make decisions about what to do with things you read and how to interpret an author’s ideas. For this assignment, your job is to explore the rhetorical situation surrounding a specific text by explaining the scene in which the text functions, identifying how and why the text came to be. You will show your ability to look beyond the content of the text and into the intentions of the author/rhetor and the expectations of the audience.
Compose a writing in which you DISCUSS (not just name) each of the following rhetorical elements in Alice Wong’s “The Last Straw”: rhetor, audience, exigence, constraints, context, text, and the rhetorical appeals used in it. You will find the reading in the Achieve e-Book. Because this assignment is designed to check whether you understand the elements of rhetorical situations and can identify them in a text, keep your response brief, but clearly supported. Include enough information to show that you see how the elements of the rhetorical situation interact within the text and enhance your understanding of it.
Objectives
Read the essay actively
Consider the effect intended by an author
Separate rhetorical elements from content
Demonstrate understanding of the vocabulary of rhetoric
Procedure
1. As you outline/plan your writing, compose the thesis statement and topic sentences for it, and identify each of the elements of the rhetorical situation in which the text was created: rhetor, context, exigence, audience, constraints, text, as well as the rhetorical appeals used in it. The order of these elements in your writing is not necessarily that listed in the sentence above; however, keep in mind that specific elements should appear in your discussion prior to others. For example, it would not make sense to open with the rhetorical appeals before your audience is introduced to the text where these appeals are used, just as it would not make sense to exclude the discussion of the context, rhetor, and exigence from the opening sections of your writing.
2. Get more specific. For each item on your outline/list, include its definition in your own words and description that is more like a brief paragraph and less like a sentence or two, which also means that you will have at least as many paragraphs in your writing as there are elements of the rhetorical situation, possibly more. As an example, a rhetor could be, “Walt Mossberg.” But a more relevant and helpful content in this section of your discussion would be, “Walt Mossberg is the rhetor and former principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal for twenty-two years, creator of the modern technology-product review. His decades of experience writing about consumer products makes him an authority when evaluating this latest product launch.” Be sure to include plenty of quotations from the essay to support your discussion of each element.
3. Consider what you discovered about the essay by completing this rhetorical analysis. What do you now understand that you didn’t catch the first time you read the text?
Add this brief concluding reflection to your writing, explaining the value of performing this kind of analysis.
Title this portion of the assignment “Mini Reflection” and include it at the end of your written document
