Welcome to this IRSC Adult Education Live Virtual Lesson

Welcome to this IRSC Adult Education Live Virtual Lesson Tonight’s topic: Critiquing written material Diana Lenartiene, Ed. S. moderator/instructor

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Critiquing Written Material

Rhetorical Analysis • While the term "rhetorical analysis" is, at first, rather intimidating for many people, it is easily understood (at least at its most basic) when broken down and defined. • Rhetoric: The art of persuasion • Analysis: The breaking down of some thing into its parts and interpreting how those parts fit together. • In rhetorical analysis, then, we examine how authors attempt to persuade their audiences by looking at the various components that make up the art of persuasion.

Components of Rhetoric • Although there are certainly many different viewpoints regarding what, exactly, rhetoric is, it is quite often divided into the following general areas: • 1. Purpose: What is the author attempting to do with his/her work? Understanding the intended purpose of a text is the first (and crucial) step in a deeper understanding of the text and author • 2. Audience: Who is the text written for? Obviously, an author's intended reader plays a large role in how the author appeals to the audience. An audience consisting of children, for example, calls for very different strategies than an audience of economists • 3. The Appeals: Aristotle, when referring to the strategies that writers use in their texts, discusses three main groups: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Three Rhetorical Styles • Ethos: The Ethical appeal does NOT refer strictly to ethics. The ethical appeal, instead refers to the credibility, character,and confidence of a writer. There are a number of ways in which an author may establish ethical appeal. • Pathos: Pathos is often referred to as the the emotional appeal, although it may certainly go beyond emotion. Examples of pathos include the use of emotion-laden words, the use of description, and the use of repetition. • Logos: The logical appeal refers to the use of reasoning to appeal to the reader. Examples of this include the use of definitions, statistics, law, and comparisons.

Tools of Critical Reading

Tools of Critical Reading • Active reading — (Thinking reading) • Recognizing audience. • Diction: • Denotative Language and AudienceThe words a writer selects relate directly to the audience. At the denotative level, an audience understands only language that relates to its knowledge and experience. • Connotative Language and AudienceLanguage is not denotative only; it possesses the capacity to mean beyond the symbolic equivalency to object, action, idea, and relationship.

Tools of Critical Reading • Tone : • Words combine with ideas to create the tone of a writing piece. Formal writing creates a distance between the writer and audience by removing most I's and you 's, and by using elevated, specialized language. Formal tone suggests a serious, high-minded, probably well-educated audience. Informal tone introduces the personal.

Tools of Critical Reading • Irony, Sarcasm, and Humor: • Irony and sarcasm point to discrepancies between what exists and what ought to be. Seeing the statement "students love exams," a casual reader might think, "Yes, I suppose they do." A more careful reader will look at the context and wonder if this is some extraordinary group of students, or if the writer is looking ironically at the educational system . When a writer uses irony he anticipates a sophisticated audience of careful readers. Sarcasm (attacking something by saying the opposite) works for wider audiences. Humor reveals far more about audiences than irony and sarcasm because it plays on social group bias.

Tools of Critical Reading • Argumentative Assumptions : • An assumption supposes that something is so evident that it requires no explanation or proof. The assumptions a writer and audience share are apparent more in what goes unexplained than in the position being argued.

Tools of Critical Reading • Evidence and Audience: • The audience to which a writer speaks can be seen in the kind of evidence and examples the writer uses to advance his argument.

Tools of Critical Reading • Recognizing a writer's persona (voice): • Diction, tone, assumptions, and evidence all point to a particular audience, but, they also reveal the writer's relationship with the audience. The writer's presence in a written work is called a persona. One of the most important clues to persona can be found in the tone. The closer a writer moves to his audience, the clearer the persona becomes.

Tools of Critical Reading • Determining purpose: • Writers write to tell stories (narration), to recreate for their readers a sense impression of a person, place or object (description), to explain an idea, an event, a procedure, or a phenomenon (exposition), or to argue a position. Since these are some of the purposes that shape writing, recognizing purposes through identifying description, narration, exposition, and argument is a fairly easy reading task discovered by asking, "What is this writing doing?"

Tools of Critical Reading • Point of View and Purpose • After you find purposes related to the circumstances surrounding writing, look carefully at the writer in relation to his subject. A writer's point of view may be either objective or subjective. When a writer writes objectively, he removes himself from the written word and relates facts, events, and data. With a subjective point of view, a writer intrudes on his writing's factual content with interpretation, comments, and judgments. If the writer's reaction grows responsibly from his facts, and he argues logically, relying on concrete language appealing to a reader's intellect, such writing changes people's thinking and leads to action.

Tools of Critical Reading • Assessing argument • Used loosely, argument refers to what a piece of writing says … its topic, main assertions, supporting evidence or development, and its organizational strategies. Used in this way argument refers to any writing. Assessing this kind of argument means making summary statements and describing evidence and organization. Being an active, thinking reader means also identifying formal argument strategies.

Tools of Critical Reading • Critical Analysis • For a reader to keep in mind all writing's components as he reads may seem overwhelming. Active reading, like good writing, becomes easier the more you do it. At first, a checklist or set of questions might help you sharpen your critical reading. Making your own questions will focus your critical abilities. Make sure that you have questions to help you identify: Thesis main supporting points Denotative and connotative language tone point of view assumption audience person purpose argumentative approach kind of evidence validity of evidence argument flaws

Tools of Critical Reading • Logical Fallacies: • Fallacies are errors or flaws in reasoning. Although essentially unsound, fallacious arguments seem superficially plausible and often have great persuasive power. URL: http://www.engl.niu.edu/sourcebook/I-1-5.html#FILE:%20I-1-5Site URL: http://www.engl.niu.edu/sourcebook/INDEX.html

We will now watch a video of a story, and then look at a student critique of the story.

What we have learned: • We can critique literature or non-fiction text • When critiquing, critical reading skills are very important in developing your critique • We must learn to extract information that proves our opinion in the critique from the • text • The important tools of critical reading are: • Thesis main supporting points • Denotative and connotative language • tone point of view • assumption audience • person purpose • argumentative approach kind of evidence • validity of evidence argument flaws • We can use our reading and writing skills together to create a critique of an article • or piece of literature, whether fiction or non-fiction.

Now, you need to make a copy of this screen to send to your teacher for proof of Attendance. This can be done in three easy steps:

If you still have questions, please contact me at: dlenarti@irsc.edu Thank you for viewing this presentation. Diana Lenartiene, IRSC ABE Instructor

Welcome to this IRSC Adult Education Live Virtual Lesson