Category: Assignment Showcase

Rhetorical Analysis and Wikipedia

Assignment

Assess the reliability—the accuracy, credibility, and usefulness as a research source—of information included in a Wikipedia article. Write a formal essay in which you argue for or against the reliability of the article, making sure to tailor the argument to a particular audience (see below)

Instructions

1. Select and locate a Wikipedia article related to a subject covered in class this semester: writing, technology, current event, Wikipedia, etc. Determine your selection by carefully considering what information you would like to find out about one of these subjects.

1. Conduct your analysis of the article to determine (a) if it is reliable and (b) to what extent (i.e., how reliable or unreliable it is).  Take care to make this an honest assessment based on the information available; that is, do not try to make the information fit a preconceived notion you have about Wikipedia.

Annotate the article using the following plan and criteria:

1. Read all of the information on the main (“article”) page.
   1. What information about the topic is included? What information is missing? What information seems unnecessary?
   2. How is the information organized? Is this an effective way of organizing the information? Why not?
   3. Does the entry include references?
      1. i.      Where does most of the information come from (books, other Wikipedia entries, popular articles, scholarly articles, etc.)?
      2. ii.      Click on one of the references (choose one that interests you): Does the link work? Is the reference reliable (does it provide accurate, expert information)?
   4. Does the entry include hyperlinks to other Wikipedia articles?
      1. i.      If so, click on one of these (choose one that interests you): Does the link work? Does it take you to a “good” article?
      2. ii.      Assess the linked article based on the same criteria you are using on the main article.
   5. Are there any errors on this page: grammar, spelling, content, or otherwise? If so, make note of some of the worst errors. How do these errors affect the trustworthiness of the author(s) or information?
   6. Has the entry been “flagged” in any way (for being incomplete, biased, unreferenced, etc.)? This flag may appear on the main page or on the “discussion” page. How does this “flag” affect the article?
2. Read the information on the “history” page.
   1. Who wrote the article? Do any of the history listings include usernames? If so, what information is available about the user? Do you trust this information?
3. Read all of the information on the “discussion” page.
   1. What are people discussing? Is it related to content? If so, is it about the actual content (what to include and where) or is it about the subject (opinions about the topic)? Is the discussion related to organization? What are some of the comments?
   2. Is there anything controversial about the entry?
   3. Is there anything stated on this page that makes you question the reliability of the entry?

Assignment requirement: You must submit your annotated article by class time on Wed., Oct. 31.

1. Determine your audience. Based on our discussion of your experiences with Wikipedia and, now, your analysis of the article’s reliability, decide who would benefit most from your new knowledge. Some ideas include student writers, college professors, high school teachers, the authors of the assigned texts about Wikipedia.

1. Write the essay. Based on your analysis, decide if the entry is reliable or not and to what extent. This will be your argument, which you will present as your thesis.

Reflection includes questions specific to Wikipedia

• What assumptions did you have about Wikipedia prior to beginning this assignment? Did these assumptions change? Why or why not?
• How and why did you choose the particular audience you address in your essay? How well do you think you met the needs of this audience?
• What did you learn about Wikipedia and other source material? How can you use this information in future situations, both inside and outside class, and both in ENG 110 and in other classes?

• What did you learn about writing? How can you use this in future assignments, both in ENG 110 and in other classes?

Critical Analysis and Argument: Wikipedia

Research Document (10% of course grade)

Rough draft due Wednesday, May 7; Final draft due Friday, May 16 by 2:30 p.m.

In a twist on the traditional research essay or research paper (there is a difference), the final component of the research project will be a public document:

• A letter to the editor
• A business letter
• A memo
• A speech
• A blog post
• A Facebook group
• A presentation: could present to class
• A newspaper or magazine article
• An audio file
• A brochure or pamphlet
• A Web page

The benefit of creating a public document (as opposed to a purely academic argument) is that it makes your writing real and relevant—and, perhaps, creative. The genre you choose will reflect your unique personality or accommodate a unique perspective or topic (something most research essays don’t or can’t allow for). Crafting a public document also requires you to use many of the rhetorical skills you have practiced all semester: understanding the rhetorical situation and making decisions about when, why, and how to employ rhetorical devices.

Points of interest

• All of these genres are argumentative, just in different ways. You must make an argument. Do not simply inform.
• All of these types of documents are, generally, brief. The goal is to craft a solid argument, including supporting evidence, not to write a lengthy report.
• All of these require support (evidence from sources) and documentation—but require different techniques and conventions to do so.

Instructions

• Determine the best genre for your topic and argument:
• Determine the conventions required for each genre (Prof. Patch will provide guidelines for each during the weeks leading up to the assignment).
• Write an argument in your selected genre.

Assignment conventions

The document must

• Include a minimum of 3 sources. There is no length requirement.
• Adhere to the documentation conventions of your selected genre.
  • According to…
  • Hyperlinks
• Be submitted by uploading it to the Research Document Assignment page on Blackboard.

Research Document assignment’s relationship to course objectives and experiences

This assignment will help you develop a more sophisticated writing process, including invention, drafting, revising, and editing; an awareness of writing expectations and conventions of public discourse; experience synthesizing source material, and writing to public audiences.

Rhetorical Writing Practicum

Your last two papers focused on writing in the disciplines. The analysis of Bad Haircut emphasized the rhetorical structure (interpretation thesis and supporting arguments) and style required for writing in the humanities. Your gender socialization study used the structure (hypothesis, collection/presentation of data, analysis of data/conclusion) and style of social science research.

This assignment requires you to define the rhetorical context of your writing and to make decisions about how to communicate most effectively within that context.  Because much of the writing that you’ll do after college will be a joint enterprise, this assignment is also designed to give you practice in collaborative writing.  In business, law, teaching, medicine, and other fields, you’ll frequently be writing as part of a team. It’s important to get early practice in the human relations skills (especially negotiating differences, equitably sharing tasks, and synthesizing diverse viewpoints into a coherent whole) that you’ll need in professional writing.

Assignment: Work with your team to develop a user’s guide for one target audience of the 2008 Common Reading, Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation.

Directions:

1) Begin by defining your audience and purpose. Examine the Common Reading website to explore the possibilities: http://org.elon.edu/commonreading/current/index.htm

List all the different audiences targeted by the Common Reading. Alongside each potential audience, list the various forms or types of assistance with the CR that audience might. Settle on one audience and one purpose.

2) Once you’ve selected an audience, research it. To make appropriate decisions about the rhetorical strategies (use of pathos, ethos, and logos; diction; syntax; example; persona; and structure) that will most appeal to your readers, you must carefully consider who those readers are. If you’re writing for faculty who might use the CR in a first-year core class, examine the course goals and determine how Shame of the Nation is related to those goals.

• For more information about College Writing, see http://org.elon.edu/writing/college_writing.html
• For more information about GST  110, see the sample Global Experience syllabi posted on at CATL website: http://idd.elon.edu/faculty/syllabus/syllabus.php?DocTypeVal=syllabus&CourseNameVal=The%20Global%20Experience&DeptVal=ALL&InstructorVal=ALL
• For Elon 101, see: http://www.elon.edu/e-web/academics/advising/elon101.xhtml

If you’re writing for students, consider the circumstances in which they’ll be reading the text, how their political beliefs and socioeconomic status might affect their receptivity to Kozol’s argument, and what they’ll want to know about the CR initiative and where they’re likely to discuss it in their first months of campus.

3)  Decide what kind of document your target audience might find most useful. If you’re writing to teachers, consult a professor or two to determine how they use the CR and what kind of supporting material they’d most appreciate. If you’re writing for students, survey classmates about what sort of guidance they’d have found helpful last summer as they read An Inconvenient Truth. The length of your document is a rhetorical choice that should reflect your audience and purpose. For example, a massive study guide may intimidate new students.

Some possibilities:

• Questions for class discussion for posting on ENG 110 or GST 110 BB sites;
• Questions to consider while reading that might be posted on the CR website;
• A classroom activity designed to provoke response to Kozol’s most controversial points. For example, you might write a “how to” guide for organizing a formal debate on questions like: “Is it ethical for a parents to spend $20,000/year sending their three year old to a “Baby Ivy” when there are children in their school district who will enter kindergarten “without even such very modest early-learning skills as knowing how to hold a pencil…or [recognizing] that printed pages go from left to right” (52-53)?
• A detailed writing assignment. For example, you might design an assignment that asks for a rhetorical analysis of some aspect of Kozol’s argument. Given his ridicule of President Bush’s “flooded engine” metaphor (58-59), it might be fun to examine the rhetorical impact of the most important metaphors that Kozol employs to make his argument.

4) Identify all the parts of your research and writing that you have to do, and distribute them equally among them members of your group. Decide as a group how you will work together to weave your parts into a whole.

5) Drafts of this paper are due on Wednesday, April 9. Revisions are due Wednesday, April 16.  In evaluating these papers, I will consider these questions:

• Is your choice of an audience and purpose clear and appropriate?
• Do you use rhetorical strategies designed to appeal to your audience?
• Does your “user’s guide” focus on key elements of Kozol’s argument in inventive and insightful ways?

Introduction

While the “facts” that you interpret and evaluate in humanities classes are usually in print and nonprint texts (literary, philosophical, and religious works; paintings; musical compositions; theatrical performances, etc.), the “facts” studied by social scientists are often empirical. That is, they are derived from the direct observation of people and social institutions in field research. The aim of this paper is to give you some experience in conducting the kind of field research that is a central means of gathering information in sociology, psychology, political science, economics, anthropology, journalism, and other disciplines.

An area of social science research that interests psychologists, sociologists, and educators is gender socialization, the process by which we form a masculine or feminine identity. A gender role is a set of cultural expectations that prescribes how females and males should act, think, and feel. Many cultural institutions contribute to our definitions of gender roles: the family, schools, popular media, religious groups, legislatures and courts, literature, etc.

Adolescence is a particularly crucial period in the formation of gender identity. Theorists and researchers believe that gender-role training becomes more intense at puberty as adolescents become increasingly aware of gender expectations. According to the gender intensification hypothesis, “psychological and behavioral differences between boys and girls become greater during early adolescence because of increased socialization pressures to conform to traditional masculine and feminine gender roles” (Santrock, 2005, p. 220). In other words, as boys and girls develop into adults physically, they are encouraged (by parents, teachers, and friends) to behave in more stereotypically masculine and feminine ways. (For example, I was admonished to “Sit like a lady!”)

Responding to this new pressure to conform to gender roles, adolescents develop heightened sensitivity to all the information our culture provides about what it means to be a man or woman. The media (TV, films, music, Internet, magazines, newspapers, electronic games, etc.) are a major source of this information. Sociologists have determined that  “the average 8-to 18-year-old in the United States spends more than 7 hours a day—more than 49 hours a week—using media” (Santrock, p. 485). Mass media present models of masculinity and femininity that influence adolescents’ gender attitudes and behavior.

Assignment:

Design a mini field research project that will help you to answer an interesting or important question about the gender role models presented to American adolescents by the mass media. Conduct your research, and then write a research report that presents and analyzes your findings.

There are three major field research methods: interviews, observations, and questionnaires or surveys. Use observation or a simple survey for this assignment.

Directions:

1) Brainstorm to come up with a list of research questions about gender role modeling in the media that you might investigate. Be careful to limit your field of research (i.e., one teen magazine or one TV show with a predominantly adolescent viewing audience) and to keep your research question narrow (i.e., “What subjects dominate the advice columns of Seventeen?” or “According to Grey’s Anatomy, what do men want?”). Some other examples:

• Survey: Whose photograph will be correctly identified by more college women¾Sandra Day O’Connor or Lindsay Lohan? Condoleeza Rice or Beyonce?

• Whose photograph will be correctly identified by more college males—Clarence Thomas or Chris Rock? Dick Cheney or Peyton Manning?
• Do the ads in Maxim and Vogue present men as “success objects”? (Callaghan, 2007, p. 401)
• How do the current “Top Favorite” videos on YouTube model male or female gender roles?

• How do the Cover Girl (or Levis or Gap or Jockey) models in 1987 and 2007 issues of Seventeen or Sports Illustrated compare and contrast? Are “ideal” women growing stronger? More assertive? More “serious” looking (i.e., in business suits rather than flimsy dresses)? Do men look sweet and approachable? Fierce and “don’t mess with me”?
• What are the major concerns of the female characters on Gossip Girls or The Hills?
• What are the major concerns of the male characters in The Simpsons?
• How does Kayne West’s Graduation define male or female gender roles? (Track 8, “Drunk and Hot Girls” looks promising.)
• · What do Tiger Woods and Maria Sharapova (Teen Choice Male and Female Athletes of the Year for 2007) reveal about gender difference in ideals of athleticism?
• What does “The Way I Are” suggest about the difference between a “lame” guy and a real man?
• Is Ms. Pac-Man a feminist?
• Do ads for identical or similar products (i.e., body wash, cars, Coke) significantly differ in Cosmo and GQ? Do these differences reflect gender norms?

2) Decide on the question you’d most like to answer through field research. It must be a question that interests you. Then determine your research method: What TV show, video, website, electronic game, CD, etc. will you observe¾and why? What exactly will you be looking for? How will you tabulate your observations? If you’re doing a simple survey, how will you frame your survey question(s)? How will you select your respondents? How many responses will you solicit? What will you tell your respondents about the purpose of your survey? What will “count” for a right answer? (Is “that black guy running for president” good enough for “Barack Obama”?) Be sure your project is narrowly defined and doable within 1 1/2 weeks.

3) Conduct your field research. Keep your eyes open for significant and unexpected details. Take careful notes on what you see and hear. If you’re examining ads or other print media, reproduce two or three of the best as illustrations for your report. (Do not take pages out of library periodicals.) Copy full URLs if you’re using Web sites.

4) Write your research report. Assume that your audience is a professor in an introductory sociology or psychology class. Your report should include these four parts (and use these subheadings):

a)      Introduction: clearly poses the question that you hoped to answer through field research, explains why this question is important, and presents a preliminary hypothesis;

b)      Methodology: carefully describes how you designed and conducted your research (see section 2, above);

c)      Data: presents your findings (a chart or graph is often the best way to do this);

d)      Discussion: interprets your data by explaining the significance of your findings and showing how these findings confirm or contradict your hypothesis.

5) Your final report should be about 3 pages. Title your report and use the more “objective” style preferred for scientific research reports. (Avoid the first person.) If you cite any secondary sources, use the APA method of documentation. That is the preferred documentation style in the social sciences, and is modeled in this handout. See Callaghan (pp. 533-550) for details.

6) Papers will be evaluated according to these criteria:

• Does the paper include all four parts described in section 4 (above)?
• Are all parts of the research report clearly and fully presented?
• Are the writer’s findings reliable? Persuasively presented?;
• Is the report well written in the scientific research report style?

7) Drafts of this paper (plus group copies) are due Tuesday, October 9. (There are serious penalties for failing to attend drafting conference: see the course syllabus.) Revisions are due Thursday, October 18. (This is a revised date.)

References

Callaghan, P. & Dobyns, A.  2007.  A meeting of minds (2^nd ed.). NY: Pearson.

Santrock, J.W.  2005.  Adolescence.  10th ed. Dubuque, IA: Brown and Benchmark.

Draft conference, paper 3: Gender Roles and the Media

October 9, 2007

Respondent: ____________                                      Paper’s author: ____________

1) Follow along as the writer reads the paper aloud. Then record your first impression: What is your initial reaction to this paper? Is the draft complete? Interesting? Reread the paper after recording your first impression. Make marginal notes on the draft and answer questions 2-6.

2) What question about gender roles presented to adolescents by the media is the writer attempting to answer through field research? Is it clearly and narrowly defined? How is the importance of this research question explained? Does the writer present a tentative hypothesis?

3) Is the research methodology adequately explained? How might the methodology description be improved?

4) Is the data gathered through field research clearly presented? Would a chart or table be better than a narrative presentation of data? Has adequate data been gathered?

5) What conclusion(s) does the writer derive from the research data? Are these conclusions valid and clearly supported by the data? Does the writer explain the significance of his/her findings? Explain.

6) Is the paper well written? Documented in APA style? Does it use the “objective” style favored for scientific research reports? Is the lead effective?

(http://onwritingwell.wikispaces.com/Seeing+Writing+Well)
Students investigated writing processes and rhetorical strategies for different rhetorical situations.