This is not a normal "homework assignment" and is worth 15% of your grade for Project 2. Take care to write careful and revise before submitting.
INSTRUCTIONS
This is the first of three mini-reviews that you will complete as you work towards writing your “Rhetorical Review.”
- Genre: As discussed on the assignment sheet, a review is more than a summary of the content; it’s also a critical analysis of the text and your reactions to it. Therefore, the mini-reviews should include both summary and evaluation. You should consider not just what it says, but also how it says it. A "mini-review" is a school genre, something I designed, to get you to practice these skills.
- Purpose: The purpose of a this mini review is for you to demonstrate that you read carefully, listened rhetorically, and understand both the argument and rhetorical features of the text. A secondary purpose of a reading response is for you to practice evaluating a text as you summarize it.
- Audience: Your instructor.
Step 1: Read
In this module, there are Text Sets. Choose one to work with for the rest of the Unit 2 project.
Then, once you've decided on a Text Set to work with, read one text from your chosen Text Set. Make sure you understand the text.
Step 2: Mini Review
Write a summary of the main ideas of the text, including the specific intended audience this text addresses. This is where you discuss what the text says. Then, move on to a discussion of how the text says it. You can choose to discuss any aspect of the text, as long as you can provide specific examples from the text to support your points. Aspects you might discuss include organization, vocabulary, sources referenced (type and/or frequency), use of visuals, anecdotes, etc. (Please watch the Rhetorical Choices video, inside the Rhetorical Choices quiz, if you haven’t already). Since you only have 300-400 words, you should focus specifically on the aspect(s) of the text that seem the most significant to how effectively the text communicates its message to its intended audience. Finally, you should close out with an evaluation of how effective the text was overall. Did it effectively communicate its message to the audience? What could have been improved?
In addition, your mini-review should be approximately 400 words. This is not a lot of space to summarize and evaluate, but that is the point. The mini-reviews will force you to be concise and specific with your words so that by the time you begin writing your “Rhetorical Review,” your ideas will be edited, exact, and refined.
Here is a student sample for this step.
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Step 3: Quote
Choose one quote from the text that you found particularly convincing or interesting. The quote should be 2-4 sentences long. Place the quote in quotation marks. Place a page number (34) or timestamp (1:34) or paragraph number (para. 4) next to the quote. This will help me and you locate the quote later.
Underneath the quote, explain why the quote was interesting to you or why it resonated with you. Connect the quote back to the author's main argument.
Post your response to Step 2 and Step 3.
Step 4: Comment
After you have posted, you should read over other students' responses and comment on 2 other posts. You can comment on any person’s post, not just someone who is responding to the same text as you. Please comment by:
- Finding someone who brings up something in their evaluation that you did not discuss in your own and commenting on what you find interesting and/or surprising about their post.
- Finding someone who brings up something in their evaluation that you did discuss in yours and commenting on whether your evaluations were similar or different from one another. (For example, you and your peer might have both addressed the organization of a text; however, this does not mean that you came to the same conclusions about the organization.) What are the specific similarities and/or differences between your discussions?
Your response should indicate that you read their post and have thought carefully about your responses to their ideas/experiences. Your response should be around 100 words long.
Note: if you do not comment on other students' posts, then you haven't completed the entire assignment. If you are the first person to post, this means you have to come back to the assignment to complete the assignment.
Assignment | Learning Outcomes
This assignment asks you to:
- Define and explain foundational concepts such as rhetoric, purpose, genre, audience, metacognition, and discourse community (CO1)
- Identify strategic rhetorical and stylistic techniques within multilingual and diverse linguistic contexts (CO1)
- Demonstrate awareness and use of strategic rhetorical and stylistic techniques (CO3)
- Produce a text that is appropriate for the genre and audience (CO3)
- Produce a written product with content that fulfills its purpose (CO3)
The learning outcomes for this assignment will allow you to make progress towards the stated course objectives.