Category: English

Well, here it is, the 1st paper, the Rhetorical Analysis. 
This paper tends to give students some trouble. Although it may be a new type of paper you’ve never written before, it’s not that difficult of a concept. 
Essentially, with a Rhetorical Analysis, you are taking a piece of rhetoric (one of the essays listed below), and you are making a judgement on the piece (is it successful in what it sets out to prove?), and backing that argument with evidence (how is it successful or not successful?)
which are rhetorical devices (ethos, pathos, logos, fallacy, diction, etc. ). 
View the PowerPoints for The Rhetorical paper (I’ve split them in two to make them more digestible, instead of one long one; view them in the order posted). 
Read the assigned essays below, and decide which you will write on, can ONLY use one of the essays below. 
Read the materials posted in the module . Pay CLOSE attention to the Paper assignment sheet. 
Once you’ve decided what to write on, you will create and submit an outline of the paper so I can make sure you are heading in the right direction. 
Write a clear, thoughtful, and well-drafted essay evaluating the effectiveness of the piece
you have chosen, either by examining rhetorical devices used by the writer of the essay or
through exploring the parts of the Rhetorical Triangle. Discuss at least four different types of
rhetorical devices you learned about from the lecture notes and sample essays. The rhetorical
devices MUST be different, fallacies are one type of rhetorical device, ethos, pathos, logos, are
another. As we discussed on the outline, you can only use 1 fallacy, and ethos, pathos, or
logos once. Support your assertions with specific examples from the text and remember, you are
not just identifying the author’s use of rhetorical devices, but explain HOW those devices effect
the essay (IE making it either an effective argument, or ineffective)
3. You will also need to include a counterargument that is part or parts of the essay that you
feel hinder or helps its effectiveness depending on the argument you chose to make initially. Be
sure you include the turn against, turn back, and counter evidence as part of the counter
argument.
4. Your essay should be comprised of an introduction, four body paragraphs that support
your thesis, a counter argument paragraph, and a conclusion. So, you are required to have a
minimum of 7 paragraphs. Make sure you use transitions between paragraphs. Your thesis is
your judgment of the overall effectiveness of the essay as a whole. Review materials covered
from class.
5. Your paper should be between 1000-1500 words. If you fall below word count, even by
one word, the highest grade you can make on this paper will be a D.
 Be sure you do not attack the argument itself, remember that a piece of writing
can still be effective even if you do not agree with it! A rhetorical analysis has
nothing to do with whether you like/dislike the writer or agree/disagree with him
or her. If you have strong feelings about any of the topics or writers, you might
consider choosing a different essay for your assignment.
 Remember that you are NOT arguing in favor or against the topics of these
essays. For example, you are NOT writing in favor of or against the author’s
argument, you are arguing whether the writer’s argument is effective.
 Do NOT refer to the writer by his or her first name. Use an identifier and first and
last name on first reference (author Laurence Carr); use last name or identifier
(the author, Carr) on second and subsequent reference.
 Use present tense when mentioning the writer’s writing
 Do NOT use 2nd person (you) in formal essays
 Even though the essay is YOUR argument, you do not use 1st person. This
weakens the argument. For example, “I think X is effective” is much weaker than
the statement “X is effective”.
6. You must use at least FOUR direct quotations, but not more than seven, with proper
parenthetical citations from the essay you are writing about. Return to the MLA section in the
textbook if you do not remember how to do this.
 Remember that a quotation must never stand alone; it must always be part of your own
sentence. Also remember that you must interpret or explain the quotation/example or show how
it helps to prove the point you are trying to make.
 Make sure you use parenthetical citations after quotes, and include a works cited page at
the end of the essay with sources cited properly.
 You will only use the selected essay as a source in the paper. You must NOT use any
additional outside sources for this assignment. If you use additional outside sources for this
assignment, you will receive a ZERO

Objective:
To
summarize and analyze the effectiveness of two arguments presented in the
article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
Directions: Read
the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Then, write a three-paragraph essay
(approximately 500 words) following the organizational pattern described below:
Paragraph
One: Write a paragraph summarizing Nicholas Carr’s
argument.
Paragraph
Two: Write a paragraph summarizing Peter Norvig’s argument.  
Paragraph
Three: Write a paragraph explaining
which argument you found more convincing and why, discussing specific methods
(appeals, types of evidence, counterarguments, etc.) used by the author that
make his argument so effective.
General
Requirements:
1.   
Format your essay in standard MLA style (See
the MLA format resources in the Unit 1 folder).
2.   
Organize your essay into three complete
paragraphs of approximately 500 words for the total essay.
3.   
Provide specific details and quotes from both
arguments to support your ideas. When using the exact words from the article,
you must enclose them in quotation marks. Introduce your quotes with signal
phrases such as Carr writes, or Norvig asserts, before the quotation. You do
not need citations for this essay.
4.   
Proofread carefully for grammar and spelling
errors. 
5.   
All essays must be typed and saved in Microsoft
Word and submitted to the dropbox for the assignment as a .docx, .rtf, .pdf, or
.odt file.
6.   
Only use the primary source (“Is Google Making
Us Stupid?”) for this assignment. No secondary sources (websites, use of AI
such as Chat GPT allowed). Any evidence that secondary sources have been used
for the assignment may result in a disciplinary referral for academic
misconduct.
Tips on Writing Your Argument
Analysis
For paragraphs
one and two,
1.   
Start by writing your topic sentence. Use
phrases such as the following: Carr believes that…, Norvig argues that…, Carr asserts
that…, Norvig insists that…Always refer to authors by their full name or last
name only, never by their first name by itself.
2.   
Cite evidence from the text using starter stems
such as these: “Norvig states,” “According to Carr,”.
Explain
the how/why of the evidence and how it connects to the topic sentence using one
of the stems: “Basically, this means…,” “In other words,” “The point is, …”
3.   
Write out the concluding sentence. This
sentence should summarize the author’s perspective on the topic.
For
paragraph three,
1.   
Provide a topic sentence that states your
opinion regarding which argument is more effective. You should on which
argument is more well-supported, not whose opinion you agree with.
Use phrases
such as “Ultimately, I believe ____’s argument is more convincing because
______.”
2.   
Explain methods used by the authors to support
their claims that you found to be effective or ineffective (types of appeals,
evidence presented, counterarguments, etc.). Provide specific details and
quotes from each author to support your opinions.
3.   
Provide a concluding sentence that summarizes
and reinforces your opinion of which argument is more convincing. 

English 111
Short Fiction Essay
Question:
When a character in short fiction experiences a dramatic moment so intense that it cannot be avoided or ignored, what happens to the character? What happens when that character adapts or does not change at all? Write an essay about a character from one of the stories on the reading list, delving into the problem of how a character faces a potentially life-altering event. Show why the character is put in the presence of that event and who or what forces the character into that position.
In the environment of an academic setting, what can we say we are trying to work out for ourselves by reading fiction?
Technical:
1500 words, MLA style (see owl.purdue.edu for MLA handbook and formatting guide). Word count is min/max; you must come reasonably close to this word count to avoid penalty. Define all your terms in your paper (with context and explanation, not dictionaries!). Address the assignment fully by considering what parts of the question serve as subordinate questions to the main demand of the assignment. Due on Turnitin.com by the deadline. Be sure to submit drafts as you write the paper. You must submit the paper on time to Turnitin and get a digital receipt. 
When you answer a question, explain the implications of the question and your answer. Use “because…” clauses a lot; in other words explain why all the time. Your job in academic essays is to explain (this is the foundation of expository writing, the kind of writing we do in this course). Always drive toward explaining how and why in your writing; consider how you may be wrong, and address questions you anticipate getting from someone reading your paper critically.
Good writing is straightforward, direct and precise, and when it cannot be precise it explains why.
Choose only from the short stories on our assigned reading list under Assignments.
Story of an Hour, 95; Shiloh, 254; Sonny’s Blues, 29, The Chrysanthemums, 459, Everyday Use, 480
Required Texts
Anthology: The Seagull Reader (3 book set)
Novel:  Grief Is the Thing With Feathers (Max Porter)
Play:  M. Butterfly (Hwang)     

around 3-4 pages and then a work cited.  in the morning i will tell you the two main texts i need used

Choose a Prompt and Write an Informative Essay
Topic 
Legal Alcohol/Tobacco Age
Select an advertisement image to analyze. Conduct an image analysis: The print advertisement you choose should be directed toward a specific audience. To identify the intended audience, think about the members of the potential audience for the advertisement that you have chosen. Who are they?
Your thesis must inform the reader of the specific ad chosen and the plan to analyze it. Because you are writing in the informative mode, use objective language and a neutral point of view. For this essay, the informative mode means avoiding writing in the first-person and/or expressing personal bias towards the ad’s overall intention or effectiveness.
n the introduction of your draft, briefly explain how the dictionary or society defines the word you’ve selected, and then explain the extended definition of the word in a single-sentence thesis towards the end that outlines the main points of extension. In the body paragraphs, provide unique examples and explanations to support these points of the extended definition.
Your thesis must inform your readers of the extended definition and, because you are writing in the informative mode, you must use objective language. For this essay, writing in the informative mode means avoiding writing in the first-person and/or framing personal examples using objective language.
Draft an extended definition essay that defines or redefines a word or concept.

For this assignment, I need someone who is able to write in a very concise and nuanced way. This assignment is for a assay with the eprompt: every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.
You need to use very high level vocabulary consistently throughout this essay. Every part of this essay needs to consistenttly have rythm and needs to be extremely nuanced. Make the essay unique.
I want you to answer this prompt and talk about your love for  building keyboards and how your love for it expanded to you making a side buisness of selling these keyboards to classmates. Exmphasize your love and passion for this.
Make sure to pay attention to this second part of the prompt: “Describe how you express your creative side.” Go deep into how you weild your creativeness and how this is important to you specifically. Make things up to make the essay sound good.
I have attatched 3 sample example prompt responses:
Example 1:
Some people speak Chinese, others Spanish; I speak HTML. Language is intricately beautiful, with sentences flowing all within grammar constraints creating masterpiece bound by rules. If poetry in English can be considered art, so too can programming. Just as every sentence in English has a meaning and purpose, every line of code invokes a function.
Instead of communicating with people, coding is essentially having a conversation with computers, directing them onto what is desired. Unlike people, however, computers don’t have imagination, and therefore require users to be precise in every word and sentence they depict. Just as an artist expresses imagination with a pen, a programmer uses a keyboard.
Aside from being just a program, websites bring people closer together. Because Singapore is incredibly small, in order for my school to challenge its athletes, we have to go overseas to play against other schools. Forming a league called IASAS, schools visit each other and compete. The only issue with this is how expensive it is to travel, resulting in the teams flying without family or friends.  Competitors often feel alone and unwelcome in the foreign school.
A website was the perfect solution for this: after much planning and deliberation, I formed a team to make a site where parents and friends could encourage their athletes! We started with brainstorming how to avoid cluttering the website and how best to keep it simple whilst connecting people together. Using flowcharts and diagrams, I used design principles to make it visually pleasing whilst maintaining structure and foundation. Focusing on supporting the athletes, guests were able to leave comments, get live scoring, and videos of the games.
The site allows parents and friends to encourage their students during some of the most significant tournaments of their high school careers. Creativity serves many functions, and mine intends to bring people closer together.
Example 2:
Decorum, delegates.
As the preceding caucus wraps up, young delegates dressed in their most chic outfits (hey, it’s not called MODEL United Nations for nothing) scurry to get one more signatory to support their resolution.
For my first conference, I signed up to represent Russia in the General Assembly. Being the naive yet ambitious freshman that I was, I thought it a great honor to represent one of the Permanent Five. According to feedback from my chair, I was overly democratic and too accommodating (and with due cause, I sponsored a resolution with Ukraine), to an extent that it hurt my performance.
Three months later, I accepted the Distinguished Delegate Award in ECOSOC for The Bahamas, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS). I broke away from the connotation of another tourist destination to voice some of this country’s biggest challenges as well as successes, particularly towards climate change.
I had not blatantly followed the ‘power delegate’, but stood my ground and made a powerful coalition with numerous other SIDS to become a resolution bloc, embodying the primary value my mentor, Senator Steve Glazer, impressed upon us as interns: “Represent the people of your district, not political parties or special interests”.
Creativity is finding the peripheral introverted delegates and persuading them to add numbers to your cause. Creativity is navigating around the complexities of a capitalistic society designed to benefit only the top percentile in industrialized countries. Creativity is diplomacy, an art of itself. The ability to build bridges and forge new alliances in the wake of greed and power (believe me, the high school MUN circuit is equally, if not more, cutthroat than the real political arena) is a skill needed for the ever-complicated future.
MUN has taught me the practice of rhetoric and the relevance of ethos, pathos, and logos. I have learnt to listen to opposing viewpoints, a rare skill in my primarily liberal high school.
I see MUN as a theatre production, where success is determined by how well you, in essence, become and portray your country to an audience of the world i.e., the United Nations.
example 3:
In the sugar bateys of the Dominican Republic, I always had a plan. The only caveat: it was never the same plan. My task, helping to manage optometric screenings, did benefit from preparation, sure. The meticulous sorting and cataloging of our physical glasses database was extremely useful. But the moment our group arrived, my expectations began to unravel. To keep up with the shifting conditions, I had to get creative. My old plan relied on subjective equipment, now demonstrated ineffective by language and technological barriers. New plan: use the objective autorefractor. Can’t, it demands specific light conditions, so… new plan: classic chart screens, phoropter. Timeless, right? Technically functional, too slow. New plan: the old plan, but different! Use the autorefractor and an egregious quantity of wax paper to reduce light, but keep chart-based preliminary screening. Decent enough, for now.
Our medical group moved every day, so I had to literally tear down the previous system, and rebuild it differently elsewhere. Without fail, I encountered failure. But every failure and constraint served as a catalyst for innovation. I’d tinker with the screening pipeline constantly, and repeatedly fine tune heuristics to balance time and accuracy.
In time, I found the key to improvement wasn’t a decisive plan. Rather, it was experimentation and iteration. I’d make a decision, and then remake it because I wasn’t even close. Problem solving is often assumed to be clean and algorithmic, but my most effective solutions were malleable and messy—not to mention produced in a chain of modifications so convoluted as to elude any sense of monolithic inspiration. And to be fair, I don’t recall experiencing any “magical lightning bolts of creativity” in which the perfect machination was unveiled in its entirety. But that wasn’t necessary. My innovation was incremental, and it was holistic. Behind every idea were its predecessors, and ahead, its execution. To me, that is the heart of creativity. As long as I was willing to be proven wrong, a new idea was within reach. And with it, came endless, autocatalytic possibilities, all competing to push me in a new direction.

Have is used with the subjects I, We, You, They.
Has is used with the subjects He, She, It. I have a red pen.Can you lend me a blue one? She has it. I have been searching for the document. She has kept it in the draw.

For this assignment, you will be writing a personal narrative–a story–illustrating an event or experience exemplifying gratitude. In other words, share a colorful story about an experience or event for which–either during or after the event– you feel or felt thankful.  
An example might be writing about your experience as a senior in high school and the teacher who  helped you to achieve your goal of graduating and attending college.  Another example might be writing a story about your experience growing up in a rural community, acknowledging that it was this small, but mighty, community that made you who you are today, and for this, you are thankful.  Sharing a story about a loved one whose influence has been meaningful to you in some way, and thus, you feel so very thankful for their role in your life, or in that particular experience, would also be an example. FInally, drafting a story about any experience in your life for which you are thankful it occured would be a great topic to explore for this narrative assignment. 
Assignment-Specific Requirements:
Length: This assignment should be at least 550 words. 
Thesis: Underline your descriptive thesis statement or the point of your story.
Sources/Evidence Needed:  No outside/secondary sources are needed.
Page Formatting: See Appendix C – Formatting and Submitting Your Work
MLA Requirements: See Formatting your Essay: MLA 8th Edition
Rhetorical Mode
A personal narrative is a story about you. Narrative, from the Latin narrare, means to narrate a tale or a story. The narrative you will write will be a “personal” narrative.  Thus, the story will be written by you, about you, and in a lot of ways, for you. What makes a personal narrative so interesting is that it’s a story with a point or purpose.   In other words, a personal narrative is detailed, descriptive, dialogue-driven, and determined to make a point. 
Rhetorical Considerations
Purpose:
There needs to be a reason, not only for writing the narrative, but also for why the reader should read it. The purpose of the personal narrative is to share a meaningful experience and the lesson learned from the experience. Specifically, the purpose of this essay is to share a story about a time you experienced gratitude.
Audience:
In many ways, we write a personal narrative for ourselves to reflect upon an experience, to grow from an event. However, we want you to imagine that your audience is not only you but someone else. The writer needs to know who their audience is and how their needs will affect the way the narrative is composed and presented. For example, in addition to writing this story as an opportunity for personal reflection, you may also choose a family member or friend group as your real or imagined audience.  Selecting a real or imagined audience will help you develop your essay with the right tone. The tone for a personal narrative can be formal or informal; it really depends on your chosen audience. 
Form:
This piece of writing will be presented using a story format.  It will have a beginning, middle, and end.  The story will be written with a clear introduction paragraph, a body of story-development paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. While a personal narrative is less “formal” than traditional academic writing, your story should have a thesis statement. Thus allowing the reader to truly understand the point of your story.
Six Features of a Personal Narrative
Essay Organization: The Personal Narrative is organized with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It should read like a story–with an exposition, a rise action, a climax, a falling action and a resolution or denouement.  While the Personal Narrative is certainly less formal than other academic essays, the point or moral of the story (i.e. the thesis) should be very clear to the reader.
Transitions: The Personal Narrative utilizes paragraph breaks and transitional words and phrases that help the audience (or reader) flow in and around the story. Read more about paragraph transitions in Appendix A. 
Character Description:  Develop the characters in the story so that the reader has a clear understanding of the people in the story–even if the one person in the story is YOU. Help your reader learn about the characters both by what they say and by what they do.
Sensory Details: Develop a sense of imagery within the story using sensory-driven details. In other words, create a vivid story by helping the reader to see, hear, taste and touch just as the characters in your story do. Sensory details bring your readers into the story–into the experience you are sharing with them.
Dialogue: Use internal and/or external dialogue to connect the characters and help propel the story forward. Dialogue helps the writer to “show” rather than “tell” the story to the reader.  Tips for formatting dialogue can be found in Appendix C. 
The Thesis (the message driving your story): Your story’s point or purpose should be structured as a thesis statement. And this statement should be underlined.  As the direction of your story must be made clear to the reader, it would naturally make sense that the point of your story or thesis appear somewhere within the first paragraph.   

Celia Moore offers the following example of how an individual may use mental maneuvers to “disengage” his or her “conscience” (not the technical term) from his or her immoral actions. Ms. Moore used the moral disengagement principles to describe the maneuvers. “Imagine Sam has an internal standard that prohibits theft, but has taken a newspaper without paying for it from Starbucks. Moral disengagement mechanisms help Sam construe taking the newspaper as no big deal (distortion of consequences), believe that everyone takes small things like a paper sometimes (diffusion of responsibility), that taking the paper is tiny compared to others’ violations (advantageous comparison), or that he’s seen Starbucks employees take copies of the paper, so why shouldn’t he (displacement of responsibility)? He could think that in the grand scheme of things, being an informed citizen is more important than paying for the paper (moral justification). He could even plan on leaving the paper in the café when he was finished with it, so really he was just “borrowing” it (euphemistic labeling). He could think that Starbucks is a large heartless corporation that won’t notice the missing paper (dehumanization), or even deserves having the paper taken from it because it charges so much for their coffee (attribution of blame).”
Consider the mechanisms of moral disengagement and ethical fading from our readings this week. Discuss either:
An ethical failing that occurs in a public safety organization you’re familiar with. Explain one or more moral disengagement or self-deception strategy that is used to avoid moral responsible for the behavior.
A story in the news of an ethical failing committed by a public safety professional. Argue how the professional might, using one or more moral disengagement or self-deception strategies, be convinced of a lack of moral responsibility for the behavior.
You should have reviewed the information in the discussion section about how to achieve the maximum points on discussion posts and responses.
Reference:
Moore, C. (2015). Moral disengagement. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 199-204. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/doc_view/pid/3e6b8449ab8e1e71347cd75ecd20fe64d11f0951

As we discussed, a thesis statement is one sentence that establishes the focus of your essay. In an essay, your thesis should always appear at the end of your introduction and it should be restated (worded in a new way) in your conclusion.
Exercise Directions: Create a thesis statement based on the following information.
Topic: Education is important to have (take a stance)
because
Support Points: 1. 2. 3.