Major Assignment 1: Evaluation Argument (Write a Review) Evaluation Argument objective: Find a review of a work (movie, game, book, tv show, or podcast) that you disagree with. Then, write your own review of that work, showing in what way you both agree and disagree with the original review. As you plan your essay, draw on this reading about evaluation arguments, as well as this reading about responding to counterarguments. Name your audience: Include at the top of the page the name of the magazine or website where you imagine your review to be published, which should be the same place where the original review was published. NOTE: Your imagined audience should inform the style of your argument. Introducing your argument: Introduce readers to the genre of the work and the work itself. Introduce, as well, the perspective you’ll be arguing against. Then, your thesis should establish how well the work does or does not fulfill your criteria for greatness/rhetorical effectiveness within its genre. Refuting counterarguments: These are a few ways you might disagree with the original review (this list is not exhaustive): • Disagree with how they define what makes a work great in this genre. • Disagree with how they define the genre as a whole. • Find fault in the methods of their argument, such as lack of logical support for their points, lack of key knowledge about the work or the genre, unfounded assumptions, or biased descriptions. Thesis and Essay Structure: Your introductory paragraph should set readers’ expectations for the purpose of your argument. Examples: • • • Do you want to write this essay because you disagreed so much with the review it made your blood boil? Your introduction should give a clear account of the review and the work it was reviewing, and at least a hint at why you disagree with that review. Structure the paragraphs of your essay around addressing what you think that review gets right and wrong. Do you want to write this essay to persuade readers of the work’s importance and the underappreciated genre it belongs to? Your introduction should define that genre, helping us understand what it offers to audiences, and clarifying how the work succeeds within that genre. The body of your essay should support your own opinions, addressing counterarguments only when relevant. Following the points raised in “An Essay on Essays,” feel free to play around with the structure of your essay. Make sure your essay, however, still has structure: a movement from the beginning to the end, a logic that the reader can follow, or a pattern like the rhyming of a poem. Don’t be afraid to be experimental. Try to observe some, if not all, of the strategies or guidelines outlined by LibreTexts on Evaluation Argument. Chapter 7 in the textbook may help in describing what makes a work great in this particular genre. Feel free to make up a genre as long as you can define it convincingly. Examples: Great TV Shows to Half-watch While Cooking or Romance Novels Which Also Work as Psychotherapy. Visual Design: If you are writing about a visual medium, embed at least two images to support your argument. If you are writing about a verbal medium (a book or a podcast), use pull quotes in at least two places in your essay. Label, caption, and cite your images/pull quotes. Format: 750-1250 words double-spaced. Remember to include both in-text citations and a Works Cited page for all sources paraphrased or quoted. Chapter 1 is your guide to how to informally reference specific types of works, including films, in your paragraphs. The Purdue Owl website is your source for creating full citations for your sources in MLA and APA formats. A successful essay will: • Appeal to your audience. What style, tone, or content would most appeal to readers of the magazine where you imagine this published? As you embed images/quotes and structure your headings and paragraphs, think of how your visual presentation works to absorb and guide your readers. • Define the context: Briefly summarize what your work is about, and define what particular genre it belongs to and the audience is it trying to appeal to. (Examples: Japanese Horror Manga; Biopics about Musicians; True Crime Podcasts; Tower Defense Games; etc.) What are the genre’s distinguishing features? What are the criteria that make this kind of work rhetorically effective? Chapter 7 contains strategies that will be useful here. • Be thesis-driven: Make a claim (thesis) for the work’s rhetorical effectiveness based on the specific criteria you’ve defined. A strong claim is both contestable—reasonable people might disagree—and predictive—it will set up expectations for your essay’s argument. • Develop main points around 3 or 4 specific criteria: Analysis and evaluation rely on your objective judgments of how well the work uses the persuasive tools available to it. The tools unique to a graphic novel include panel layout and the thickness of the ink line. Tools unique to a podcast might include music, pacing, and tone of voice. Consider what the work does to make you trust its information, to absorb you into its logic, and to appeal to your emotions, desires and values. • Support your points with concrete examples: Use elements of the work to develop and support your points. In addition to text, consider sound elements for podcasts or games, or color, design, and images for visual works. Chapter 2 will be helpful for this. Grading Rubric GRADING CRITERIA: Evaluation Argument Points Possible Student Score Appeals to audience using specific style, tone, and content 15 Defines the context of the subject including summary, 10 genre, distinguishing features, opposing arguments from another review, etc. Has a clear thesis driving your argument, and develops this 30 thesis using 3 to 4 specific criteria Supports main points of the thesis with concrete examples 25 and careful consideration of counter arguments. Displays correct grammar and mechanics 10 Demonstrates concision, clarity, and fluency 10 TOTAL 100 GRADE SCALE: [100 to 97 A+] [96 to 93=A] [92 to 90=A-] [89 to 87=B+] [86 to 83=B] [82 to 80=B-] [79 to 77=C+] [76 to 73=C] [72 to 70=C-] [69 to 67=D+] [66 to 63=D] [62 to 60=D-] [59 to 0=F] Tips for Composing Essay 1: Evaluation Argument / Review of a Work Tips for Success in Composing Essay 1: Evaluation Argument Advice for emulating the style of a particular magazine or website: • Here is some sage advice from the writer Kurt Vonnegut. The only point I would add to Vonnegut's is to find writers whose style you admire and imitate them. For this essay, go back to our Week 2 discussion, reread the review you found that you liked best, and look closely at its style--its sentence patterns, word choices, its ways of creating emphasis, and even its visual design features such as images and headings and color. Pick one or two of these stylistic features to imitate in your own essay. Advice for persuasive & absorbing description of the work you're reviewing: • Learn how to effectively describe a scene or image in detail, so that you can absorb your readers in the work: https://pdx.pressbooks.pub/empoword/chapter/describing-scene/ • Collect some adjectives for describing tone. If you're trying to describe the tone of a scene or character, or just the feeling that a particular moment in a story gives you, and you can't find the right words for it: Here's a list of tone words you might pick from. • Employ some expert terminology for describing film/tv/scenes from games: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/writin g_about_film/terminology_and_starting_prompts.html Integrating images or pull quotes in your essay: This is a requirement for Essay 1. The links below will help you with the technical aspects. • • • Images--how to properly embed, label, and cite them. Design advice for adding attractive pull quotes Technical advice for adding pull quotes in Word Citing sources: • If you're using an automatic citation generator--words of advice to do so successfully. How to cite in MLA format: • In-text citations • Works Cited Page entries for books • Works Cited Page entries for films, podcasts, & tv shows. • In-text citations and Works Cited Page entries for video games. Tips for Composing Essay 1: Evaluation Argument / Review of a Work How to cite in APA format: • In-text citations • References Page entries for books • References Page entries for films, podcasts, & tv shows. • In-text citations and References Page entries for video games.
Purchase answer to see full attachment