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The Brief MH Guide: Writing
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Contents
1. Reading Critically for College and for Life 1
2. Writing to Convince 20
iii
Credits
1. Reading Critically for College and for Life: Chapter 2 from The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for
Life, Second Edition by Roen, Glau, Maid, 2011 1
2. Writing to Convince: Chapter 8 from The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition by
Roen, Glau, Maid, 2011 20
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McGraw−Hill Guide:
Writing for College,
Writing for Life, 2/e
I. Getting Started
2. Reading Critically for
College and for Life
1
© The McGraw−Hill
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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition
Chapter
2
Reading
Critically
for College
and for Life
In Chapter 1, we considered
ing strategies. Specifically, the
you use that material in your
how writing skills will serve you
chapter presents prereading
writing requires you to read
in the academic, professional,
strategies, strategies for read-
critically.
civic, and personal areas of
ing actively, and postreading
your life. This chapter focuses
strategies. All of these strate-
critically? One thing reading
on an activity that reinforces
gies will help you better un-
critically does not mean is to
and helps you improve your
derstand what you read and
be “nit-picky” or negative.
writing skills: reading. When
we read, we make
meaning out of
words on a page
use that information to make
your own writing more
effective.
In your col-
What does it mean to read
Rather, when you read a text
critically, you question what
you read, make connections to
other things you have read and
or computer
lege classes, you
to your own experiences, and
screen. We also
will be asked to
think about how the informa-
“read” photo-
read (and write)
tion in the text might help you
about all kinds of
as you develop your own writ-
graphs and other
visual images.
Actually, then, reading is the active process
of constructing meaning.
In this chapter, we ask you
print and digital
texts for all kinds of
purposes. More often
ing. To read critically means to
read thoughtfully, to keep in
mind what you already know,
than not, you will use some of
and to actively interact with the
what you read in the papers
text. Critical readers underline,
to consider how you now read
that you write for your college
make notes, and ask questions
different kinds of material and
classes. The connection be-
as they read.
give you some helpful read-
tween what you read and how
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I. Getting Started
2. Reading Critically for
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College and for Life
Writing for College,
Writing for Life, 2/e
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PART 1 | Getting Started ■
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2 | Reading Critically for College and for Life
Why Read Critically? Integrating Sources
into Your Own Writing
Why do you suppose that your teacher asks you to read critically and thoughtfully? In addition to reading to understand the information, a key reason to read
critically and thoughtfully is so that you will be able to put the information and
concepts you read about into your own writing, to support your own ideas.
There is an added bonus to reading critically: It helps you understand the
ways the writing you read “works”—what makes that writing effective (or not),
how that writing connects to and impacts (or not) readers, and so on. As you
read and learn to understand how the writing your teachers ask you to read
functions, you will be able to construct more effective texts.
In your college classes, you will be asked to read a lot. Understanding what
you read and relating what you read to what you already know is what college
is about. As you read for your college classes, conWriting Activity
sider how you might use that information in your
own class papers or examinations. For example, if
How Do You Read?
you know your philosophy instructor will ask you
to construct a paper in which you outline and exake a few minutes to answer
plain “philosophy of the mind,” you should look
the following questions:
for both of those terms and anything that con• What kinds of books or
nects them as you read. Ask yourself:
magazines do you like to read?
Newspapers? Web sites? Blogs?
• What is the main point, the thesis? How does it
relate to what I already know? To what I’m read• How does the way you read a text
ing for this class?
online differ from the way you
T
read an article from a print magazine or newspaper?
• How do you read your college textbooks? How do the strategies you
use to read a text for one course
differ from those you use to read
texts for another course?
• What strategies do you use to read
long, complex nonfiction texts?
• What strategies do you use to
help you understand and remember what you have read?
Share your answers with several
classmates. How do your responses compare with theirs? What strategies do
they use that might be helpful to you?
• How are the main terms defined? How do the
author’s definitions compare to what I think the
terms mean? What terms or concepts are not explained (and so I’ll need to look them up)?
• How effective is the supporting evidence the author supplies?
• What did the author leave out? How does that
affect his or her argument?
• What information in this text will help me construct my own paper?
You use what you learned from your reading by integrating those ideas into your own writing, by citing and paraphrasing the concepts you glean from
your reading. You can read about using quotations
in your own writing on pages 118–119. Pages 164–
165 discuss how to paraphrase and attribute those
ideas correctly.
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2. Reading Critically for
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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition
Using Prereading Strategies
■
PART 1 | Getting Started
Using Prereading Strategies
When you write something, you have a purpose in mind. As we noted in
Chapter 1, the reason for writing is your rhetorical purpose—what you are
hoping to accomplish. Likewise, before you read, think about your rhetorical
purpose: What are you trying to accomplish by reading? Are you reading to
be entertained, to learn new information, to understand a complex subject in
more detail, or for some other reason? If you consciously think about why you
are reading, as well as how you plan to read a particular piece of writing, you
will have a strategy you can follow as you begin reading.
Before you start to read any written work, take a few minutes to preview its
content and design. Look for the following elements:
• The title of the work, or of the particular section you are about to read
• Headings that serve as an outline of the text
• Boxes that highlight certain kinds of information
• Charts, maps, photographs, or drawings
• Numbered or bulleted lists (such as this one) that set off
certain information
Think about what you bring to your reading task: In what ways does the
text seem similar to or different from others of this type or on this topic that
you have already read? What can you bring to the new reading that you have
learned from your past experiences? If you are actively involved in the reading
process and if you think of reading rhetorically—that is, if you think about
what you want to get from the reading—then you will start with a useful map
for any text you read.
Next, skim the text by reading the first and last sections or paragraphs, as
well as any elements that are highlighted in some way, such as boxes, section
titles, headings, or terms or phrases in bold or italic type. Sometimes a box or
highlighted section at the beginning of an article—often called an abstract—
will give you a quick summary of what is ahead.
As a final step before you start to read, consider again what you are hoping
to accomplish by reading this particular text. Ask yourself:
• What information have I noticed that might help me with my
writing task?
• How have I reacted so far to what I have seen in the text?
• What questions do I have?
• What in this text seems to relate to other texts that I have read?
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2 | Reading Critically for College and for Life
Reading Actively
Now that previewing has given you a sense of what the text is about, you are
ready to read actively. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you read:
• What is the writer’s thesis or main point? What evidence does the writer
provide to support that point? Does the writer offer statistics, facts, expert opinion, or anecdotes (stories)?
• How reliable is the information in this text? How conscientiously does
the writer indicate the sources of his or her data, facts, or examples? How
reliable do these sources seem?
• What else do you know about this topic? How can you relate your previous knowledge to what this writer is saying? In what ways do you agree
or disagree with the point the writer is making?
For more on strategies
for argument,
• Has the writer included examples that clarify the text? Are there photographs, drawings, or diagrams that help you understand the writer’s
main points? Graphs or charts that illustrate data or other statistical information? In what way(s) do the examples and visuals help you better
understand the text? What information do they give you that the written text does not provide? What is the emotional impact of the photographs or other visuals?
including dealing with
opposing views, see
Chapter 14.
• What information or evidence is not in this text? (Your past experience
and reading will help you here.) Why do you think that the author might
have left it out?
Writing Activity
Annotating “The Ethics
of ‘Stealing’ a WiFi
Connection”
“
T
he Ethics of ‘Stealing’ a WiFi
Connection” discusses a growing
issue: Who “owns” the right to Internet access that comes from a person’s
or business’s network? Annotate the
rest of Eric Bangeman’s comments (see
Figure 2.1). As you work, keep in mind
your own responses to his comments.
Your instructor may want you to
share your annotations with several of
your classmates, noting places where
your responses are similar and where
they may differ.
• If what you are reading is an argument, how effectively does the writer acknowledge or outline
other points of view on the issue at hand?
By asking questions like these, you can use strategies such as annotating, performing a rhetorical
analysis, reading visuals, and reading Web pages to
read actively.
Annotating Effectively
When you annotate, you interact actively with
the text as you read. To annotate a reading, make
the following kinds of notes (Figure 2.1):
• Underline the main point or thesis of the reading, or otherwise mark it as the key point.
• Underline key supporting points, and indicate
in the margins next to the corresponding paragraphs why you think each point is important.
• List any questions you have.
• Respond to the text with your own remarks.
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Writing for College,
Writing for Life, 2/e
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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition
Reading Actively
Wonder what this
is—guess it’s just a
network designation
and not something
I really need to
understand.
Wow—more than half
“steal” Internet access.
Well, I know some
people who do, too.
My friend Nick has
this kind of network
—wonder if he is
helping people “steal”
the Internet? Is someone who has an open
network complicit in
other people using
that network?
Cool story! I can
imagine doing that.
But is it really silly
to use something
someone else is paying
for and didn’t give you
permission to use?
Not sure this
analogy works here.
Neat to be able to
use your phone to
surf the Web.
So he is saying that
this is a victimless
crime?
I didn’t know there
was such a thing—
have to do some
research on what
this means.
■
PART 1 | Getting Started
The ethics of “stealing” a WiFi connection
A recently released study by a security firm says that using an open WiFi network without permission is stealing.
Ars looks at the ethics of open WiFi
By Eric Bangeman | Last updated January 3, 2008 9:12 PM CT
Network security firm Sophos recently published a study on what it terms WiFi “piggybacking,” or logging on to someone’s open
802.11b/g/n network without their knowledge or permission. According to the company’s study, which was carried out on behalf of
The Times, 54 percent of the respondents have gone WiFi freeloading, or as Sophos put it, “admitted breaking the law [in the UK].”
Amazingly, accessing an unsecured, wide-open WiFi network without permission is illegal in some places, and not just in the UK.
An Illinois man was arrested and fined $250 in 2006 for using an open network without permission, while a Michigan man who
parked his car in front of a café and snarfed its free WiFi was charged this past May with “Fraudulent access to computers,
computer systems, and computer networks.” On top of that, it’s common to read stories about WiFi “stealing” in the mainstream
media.
It’s time to put an end to this silliness. Using an open WiFi network is no more “stealing” than is listening to the radio or watching
TV using the old rabbit ears. If the WiFi waves come to you and can be accessed without hacking, there should be no question that
such access is legal and morally OK. If your neighbor runs his sprinkler and accidentally waters your yard, do you owe him money?
Have you done something wrong? Have you ripped off the water company? Of course not. So why is it that when it comes to WiFi,
people start talking about theft?
The issue is going to come to a head soon because more and more consumer electronics devices are WiFi-enabled, and many of
them, including Apple’s iPhone and most Skype phones we’ve used, come ready out of the box to auto-connect to open WiFi
networks. Furthermore, as laptop sales continue to grow even beyond desktops, the use of open WiFi is only going to grow along
with it.
Steal this WiFi connection!
When you steal something, there’s typically a victim. With WiFi, Sophos thinks the ISPs are the victims. “Stealing WiFi Internet
access may feel like a victimless crime, but it deprives ISPs of revenue,” according to Sophos’ senior technology consultant Graham
Cluley. Furthermore, “if you’ve hopped onto your next door neighbors’ wireless broadband connection to illegally download movies
and music from the ‘Net, chances are that you are also slowing down their Internet access and impacting on their download limit.”
In Sophos’ view, then, both ISPs and everyday subscribers can be victims.
In one fell swoop, “stealing WiFi” gets mentioned in the same breath as “illegally” downloading movies and music. The fact is,
people join open WiFis for all manner of reasons: to check e-mail, surf the web, look up directions to some place, etc. Those don’t
sound like nefarious activities, however, and certainly not activities which are likely to get someone in trouble. Of course if you run
an open WAP (wireless access point) and it is heavily used for just e-mail, you could still hit your bandwidth cap (if you even have
one), but that has to happen only once for that user to figure out what’s up, and fix the problem. And let’s be honest: it is their
problem. No one forced that user to install a WAP or to leave it wide open. We’ll get back to this in a minute.
The argument that using open WiFi networks deprives ISPs of significant revenue is also a red herring. Take the case of public WiFi
hotspots: official hotspots aren’t that difficult to find in major cities—every public library in Chicago has open WiFi, for instance. Are
the public libraries and the countless other free hotspot providers helping defraud ISPs? No, they’re not. There’s no law that using
the Internet requires payment of a fee to an ISP, and the myriad public hotspots prove this.
Really, there’s only one time when you could argue that an ISP is being gypped, and that’s when someone is repeatedly using his
neighbor’s open WiFi in lieu of paying for his own service. Is this really wrong? Let’s consider some parallel examples. If the man
in question were given a key and told that he could enter his neighbor’s house whenever he wanted to use a PC to access the
Internet, would this be wrong? Of course not. They key here (pun intended) is the “permission” given by the owner of the home.
Our leeching friend would clearly be in the wrong if he were breaking into the house, of course, because he would be sidestepping
something clearly set up to keep him out. If he has permission, I suppose one could argue that it’s still not right, but you won’t find
a court that will punish such a person, nor will you find too many people thrilled at the idea that someone else can tell them who
they can and can’t allow into their homes for what purposes.
Some people leave their wireless access points wide open deliberately. A friend of mine and recent seminary graduate lived in a
campus-owned apartment building. In addition to being a man of the cloth, Peter is a longtime Linux user and open-source advocate.
While living here in Chicago, he got his DSL from Speakeasy and shared the connection with others in his building…and anyone
else who needed a quick Internet fix (Speakeasy even encouraged this). He even positioned his router so that anyone in the church
across the street could pick up a signal. Obviously, not everyone is like Peter. But despite easy-to-read instructions and a plethora
of warnings about the need to secure your WAP, some people just can’t be bothered to enable the most basic security settings.
To the person with a laptop and a sudden need to check e-mail or surf the web, it’s not possible to tell who is leaving their access
points open deliberately and who just plain doesn’t care. The access point is there and the virtual doors are unlocked, so why not
take advantage of it if you’re in need?
A couple of caveats: be familiar with the law of the land. As the examples at the beginning of this story show, it’s illegal to access a
WAP without permission—even if it’s wide open—in some places. Also, you should never use an open point for anything illegal or
even unneighborly. Don’t log onto the first “linksys” WAP you see and fire up a torrent for your favorite, just-released Linux distro.
And as always, don’t leave your own 802.11b/g/n router wide open unless you’re comfortable with random surfers using your ‘Net
access for their own purposes.
Open WiFi is clearly here to stay.
FIGURE 2.1 Example of Annotations on a Page
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2 | Reading Critically for College and for Life
• Jot down key terms and their definitions.
• Mark sections that summarize material as “summary” (see the example in Figure 2.1).
Using the Internet to Find
Definitions
Are you faced with one of those jargon-filled
college reading assignments? When the glossary at the back of the book just isn’t enough,
try searching the Web for definitions. A number of good dictionaries and glossaries are
available online. One strategy is to use a Web
search engine to find definitions of complex
terms. For example, if you’re looking for a
working definition of existentialism, type
“define: existentialism” (without quotation
marks) into a search engine’s search box.
Often your top results will include dictionary
sites, academic Web sites, and technical sites
that have developed working glossaries for
students, experts, and professionals.
Constructing a Rhetorical Analysis
When you analyze something, you mentally “take
it apart” to determine how the various parts or aspects function and relate to the whole. If you were
to analyze, say, the winning team in last year’s
Super Bowl or World Series, you would examine
the various aspects that make that team the very
best (perhaps the coaching, the players, and/or the
game plan) to determine how the various parts of
that team work together to make it the best team.
(For more on analysis, see pages 180–221.)
A rhetorical analysis is a way of looking at something, often a text, from a rhetorical standpoint. The
purpose of examining a text from a rhetorical perspective and then constructing a rhetorical analysis
of that text is to help you understand how the text functions: how each aspect
of that text works to fulfill its purpose. So, if a text is trying to persuade you
of something, you should examine how the various parts of that text work to
persuade. If a text is intended to be informational (a newspaper article, for example), then you should read through the text looking for how that text informs.
A rhetorical analysis includes a search for and identification of what are
called rhetorical appeals: the aspects of a piece of writing that influence the
reader because of the credibility of the author (ethos), an appeal to logic (logos),
and/or an appeal to the emotions of the audience ( pathos). The relationships
among ethos, logos, and pathos can be represented as a triangle in which the
author is related to an appeal to ethos, the audience or reader to the appeal of
pathos, and the purpose of the text to the appeal of logos:
Rhetorical Triangle
Rhetorical Appeals
Author
Ethos
(Credibility)
Audience
Purpose
Pathos
(Emotion)
(For more on the rhetorical triangle, see page 460.)
Logos
(Logic)
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Reading Actively
■
PART 1 | Getting Started
GENRES Up Close Writing a Rhetorical Analysis
The purpose of a rhetorical analysis is to examine an item—most often a text—to determine how the parts or aspects of the text function together to accomplish the author’s
purpose. Rhetorical analysis, then, is really a critical reading.
One way to understand how to use a rhetorical approach is to consider an advertisement. How does a specific advertisement work to convince the audience? Most often, an advertisement is intended to convince a reader to buy a product. Consider the
advertisement for Levi’s Copper Jeans shown in Figure 2.2. Do you notice the shiny
21
GENRES UP CLOSE
Reflection (p. 11)
Rhetorical Analysis
(p. 21)
Audience Profile (p. 36)
Literacy Narrative (p. 65)
Profile (p. 110)
Annotated Bibliography/
Review of Literature
(p. 152)
Visual Analysis (p. 198)
Editorial (p. 239)
Review (p. 281)
Poster (p. 329)
Proposal (p. 378)
Book Review (p. 419)
FIGURE 2.2
Advertisement
for Levi’s Copper
Jeans
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white areas in the ad? And the words “original” and “reconstructed”? And the coppercolored background, which reinforces the name of the product?
Could the ad be suggesting that the copper rivets used in the manufacturing of
Levi’s Copper Jeans are strong, like the metal used to surgically reconstruct (there is
that word again) a broken arm? If so, what kind of rhetorical appeal is the ad making?
How do you interpret the use of the word “original” in this advertisement? Is the
ad suggesting that only “original” people wear Levi jeans? That these jeans make you,
somehow, original? If so, what kind of rhetorical appeal is the ad making?
Could the skeletal figure have been used to suggest that real “original” people
wear these jeans, especially those engaged in dangerous activities (like extreme sports,
which might account for her broken arm). If so, what kind of rhetorical appeal is the
ad making?
In a rhetorical analysis, you generally will:
• Contextualize a piece of writing (author, audience, and purpose).
• Identify the structure of the piece (chronological, cause/effect, problem/
solution, topical, and so on).
• Identify the rhetorical appeals of the piece (ethos, logos, pathos).
Ethos appeals to one’s beliefs, ethics, and credibility, and to the trustworthiness of the speaker/author. When you read a text to identify the writer’s ethos,
look for the following characteristics:
• Language appropriate to the audience and subject
• A sincere, fair presentation of the argument
• Grammatical sentences
• A level of vocabulary appropriate for the purpose and formality
When you read a text to identify the rhetorical appeal of logos, look for the
following characteristics:
• Denotative meanings or reasons (literal, dictionary definitions
rather than metaphorical or connotative meanings)
• Factual data and statistics
• Quotations
• Citations from authorities and experts
When you read a text to identify the rhetorical appeal of pathos, look for
the following characteristics:
• Vivid, concrete language
• Emotionally loaded language
• Connotative meanings (beyond the basic meaning)
• Emotional examples
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Reading Actively
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PART 1 | Getting Started
23
• Narratives of emotional events
• Figurative language
(For more on rhetorical appeals, see pages 458–460.)
Here are some questions you might consider when you read a text, questions that will help you pinpoint the rhetorical appeals:
• Who is the intended audience? How do you identify the audience?
• What do you see as the writer’s purpose? To explain? Inform? Anger?
Persuade? Amuse? Motivate? Sadden? Ridicule? Is there more than one
purpose? Does the purpose shift at all throughout the text?
• Can you identify the rhetorical appeals of this piece of writing (ethos,
logos, pathos)? What would you add or omit to make the rhetorical appeals more effective?
• How does the writer develop his or her ideas? Narration? Description?
Definition? Comparison? Cause and effect? Examples?
• What is the tone of the text? Do you react at an emotional level to the
text? Does this reaction change at all throughout the text?
Writing Activity
• How does the writer arrange his or her ideas?
What are the patterns of arrangement?
• Does the writer use dialogue? Quotations? To
what effect?
• How does the writer use diction? Is it formal?
Informal? Technical? Jargon? Slang? Is the
language connotative? Denotative? Is the language emotionally evocative? Does the language change throughout the piece? How does
the language contribute to the writer’s aim?
Writing a
Rhetorical Analysis
A
pply the first three questions to the advertisement
for Levi’s Copper Jeans. Share your responses with several of your classmates.
How are those responses similar? How
different?
Reading Visuals
As a college student, you will most often be asked to read words on paper, but
you can usually apply the same strategies you use to read sentences and paragraphs critically to other types of texts as well. You might think that visuals
are easier to read than written text, but this assumption is not accurate. In fact,
you often have to pay more attention to visual images, not only because they
are sometimes subtler than written text but also because you are not accustomed to reading them critically.
While the process of understanding photographs, bar and line graphs, diagrams, and other visuals may seem different from that of reading and understanding textual information, you are essentially doing the same kind of work.
When you read a text, you translate letters, words, and sentences into concepts
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and ideas; when you read a visual image, you do the same kind of translation.
Just as you read a local newspaper or other printed text for information, you
also read the photographs in the newspaper or the images on your television or
computer screen to be informed.
Writing Activity
Reading Text and Visuals in an Advertisement
S
elect a full-page advertisement from a newspaper or magazine,
and read both the written text and the visual elements carefully, keeping in mind that nothing in an advertisement is left to
chance. Each element, from the kind and size of the typeface, to the colors, to the illustrations or photographs, has been discussed and modified
many times as the advertisement was developed and tested. On a separate piece of paper, jot down answers to the following questions:
• What is this advertiser trying to sell?
• What kinds of evidence does the advertisement use to convince
you to buy the product or service?
• Does the advertiser use the rhetorical appeal of ethos (see page 22),
and if so, how?
• Does the advertiser use the rhetorical appeal of logos (see page 22),
and if so, in what way?
• In what ways does the advertisement appeal to your emotions (the
rhetorical appeal of pathos—see page 22)?
• What strategies does the advertiser employ to convince you of the
credibility of the ad’s message?
• How effective is this advertisement? Why?
• How might the various elements of the advertisement—colors,
photos or other visuals, background, text—be changed to make
the ad more, or less, effective?
• How much does the advertisement help potential buyers make informed decisions about this product?
If your instructor asks you to do so, share your advertisements and
notes with several of your classmates. What similarities did you find in
the advertisements that you selected? In what ways did the advertisements make use of visuals? What were the most effective elements of the
advertisements?
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Reading Actively
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PART 1 | Getting Started
25
As you read visuals, here are some questions to consider:
• How can you use words to tell what the visual shows?
• If the visual is combined with written text, what does the visual add to
the verbal text? What would be lost if the visual were not there?
• Why do you think that the writer chose this particular format—photo,
line drawing, chart, graph—for the visual?
• If you were choosing or designing a visual to illustrate this point, what
would it look like?
• How accurately does the visual illustrate the point?
• What emotions does the visual evoke?
Reading Web Sites
Today many of us read Web sites, which can include not only text, with type
in different colors and various sizes, but also photographs or other visual elements, videos that we can click on to view, and music. To read Web sites actively and critically, you need to examine the information on your screen just
as carefully as you would a page of printed text or a visual in a magazine or
newspaper. Because there are more aspects of the text to examine and consider,
however, and also because it is often more difficult to establish where a text on
the Web comes from, active reading becomes even more important. Consider
the following additional questions when you are reading a Web page:
• The uniform resource locator (URL) of a site, its address, can give you
clues about its origin and purpose. For any page you visit, consider what
the URL tells you about the page, especially the last three letters—edu
(educational), gov (U.S. government), org (nonprofit organization), or com
(commercial). What difference does it make who sponsors the site?
• How reputable is the person or agency that is providing the information
on this page? You can check the person’s or agency’s reputation by doing
a Web search (in Google, Bing, or Yahoo!, for instance).
• What clues do you see as to the motives of the person or agency that is
providing this information? Is there a link to an explanation of the purpose of the site? Usually, such explanations are labeled something like
“About [name of organization or person].”
• How current is the information on this page? Can you find a date that
indicates when the page was last updated?
• Can you identify any of the rhetorical appeals (ethos, logos, pathos)?
• How does the structure of the Web site impact its message?
• If there are links on the page, how helpful is the description of each link?
Are the links working, or do they lead to dead ends?
For further details
about evaluating
information on the
Web, see Chapter
19, “Finding and
Evaluating Sources.”
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Writing Activity
Reading Web Pages: What You Can See
U
sing the questions on page 25, read the following Web page. Respond in writing to
as many of the questions as you can. Compare your responses with those of your
classmates.
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Using Postreading Strategies
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Using Postreading Strategies
After you have read an essay or other text actively and annotated it, spend a
bit of time thinking about what you have learned from it and even writing in
response to it. Review your annotations and answer the following questions:
• What is the main point or idea you learned from working through this
text?
• What did you learn that surprises or interests you?
• How does the information in this text agree with or contradict information on this topic you have already read or learned from your own
experience?
• What questions do you still have about this text?
• Where can you find answers to those questions?
• What in this reading might be useful in your own writing?
One useful method for storing and keeping track of what you have learned
from your reading is to keep a writer’s journal. A journal is a handy and accessible place to write down the information and ideas you gather, as well as your
reactions to and insights about the texts you read. Other effective postreading strategies include writing summaries, synthesizing information, and using
your reading in your writing.
Starting Your Writer’s/Research Journal
A writer’s journal is a place where you keep track of the notes, annotations, and
summaries that you make from your reading. Because any writing project longer than a page or two demands more information than you can usually store
in your memory, it is vital to keep a written record of information that you discover. You can use the entries in your journal as the basis for group discussions
as well as for writing tasks.
The information that you include in your journal can vary based on the
needs of the project you are working on. The format and design will also vary
to suit your purpose. In other words, your rhetorical situation will have an
impact not only on the material you collect, the notes that you take, and the
summaries and syntheses that you write (see pages 28–31), but also on the
physical makeup of your journal. If you are working on a project that requires
a large number of illustrations, for example, you will need to include space in
your journal to store them.
It is usually a good idea to keep a journal of some sort for each writing project you are working on. Consider the following questions for each journal:
• What kinds of information (data, charts, anecdotes, photos, illustrations,
and so on) should you collect for this project?
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• What information will help you get your message across to your intended
audience?
• What information might you jot down that may lead to more complex
ideas? Why would more complexity be desirable?
• What questions do you have and how might you go about finding answers to those questions?
• What kinds of illustrations might help you show what you mean?
For more on taking
notes from and
properly citing sources,
see Chapter 20.
As you write in your journal, you should note where ideas or quotations
come from in the original texts, so that you will be able to properly cite them in
your own writing. Get in the habit of noting the information you will need to
cite your source, including the page number an idea or quotation comes from.
Writing Effective Summaries
mhconnectcomposition.com
Summarizing QL2001
After they have read and annotated a text, many readers find that summarizing it also helps them to understand it better. A summary is a concise restatement of the most important information in a text—its main point and major
supporting points.
Writing Activity
Reading a Text Critically
A
ssume that for your business ethics class, you have been asked to read the following
column “Downloading Music: Harmful to the Artist, the Recording Company, or
Neither?” by Carlton Vogt, who wrote the piece for InfoWorld. Based on what you have
learned in this chapter, consider how you should go about reading this text. Use the
critical reading skills you have learned to do the following:
• Explain what you already knew about this topic just from the title.
• In a brief paragraph, explain what you did before you read this text. Did you skim it?
• Annotate the first paragraph.
• Jot down your answers to the following postreading questions, using no more than
two sentences for each response.
• What was your initial reaction and response to this text?
• What is the main idea you learned from working through this text?
• Did you learn anything that surprises or interests you?
• In what ways does the information in this text reinforce or contradict other texts
you have read or what you know from your own experience?
• What questions do you still have about this text?
(continued)
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Writing Activity
Reading a Text Critically (continued)
Ethics Matters by Carlton Vogt
Downloading music: harmful to the artist, the recording company, or neither?
I may be the best person to talk about Napster—or the worst. You can see where this is going already. I don’t buy a lot of CDs.
In fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought one. I don’t download music from the Internet. And I don’t write or perform
music. So I’m either completely neutral or totally out of the loop.
That’s the nice way of putting it. Some readers, responding to recent columns, put it less charitably. Their verdict: I haven’t
thought about it enough, I’m totally clueless, or I’m an idiot. All of these were comments about my position on Napster, which
is puzzling, because I haven’t taken one. However, these readers pointed out to me that the situation is perfectly clear:
1. Downloading music is not stealing.
2. Downloading music is definitely stealing.
3. Downloading music is wrong, but not stealing.
4. Downloading music is neither wrong nor stealing.
How could I be so dense? There were several variations on these themes. Some thought you could rip music off a purchased CD
to use on other devices. Others thought you could share certain tracks—but not the whole CD—with intimate friends (although
they didn’t say what level of intimacy you need to have achieved first). A few argued that the music industry was so evil that
anything you can do to use music for free is totally justified.
And, in typical fashion, many were convinced that their opinions were not only correct, but also self-evident. So I’m glad we’ve
cleared that up.
A few argued the fine points of copyright law, but the connection between law and ethics is, at best, tenuous—and the subject
of a future column—so I usually hesitate to look to the law for the proper ethical answer.
But let’s take my CD-buying experience as an entry point. What sometimes happens is that I go to the store, look at a CD that
strikes my fancy, find four out of 12 tracks that I find appealing, and put the CD back. Is the recording company better off or
worse off that I’ve not bought the album? I suppose you could say it’s worse off, although I could argue that it’s neither, because
its position hasn’t changed from before I looked at the album. However, it has lost a potential customer. Have I done anything
wrong? No. I have no obligation to make the company better off by buying the album.
How about the artist? Again worse off—and on two counts. Not only has the artist not gotten whatever royalty would come
from the sale of the CD, but also I haven’t heard the music. And isn’t the whole point of performing so that people will hear
what you do?
I’m a writer, and I get paid for it. InfoWorld puts my column on its Web site. On one level I’m satisfied; I’ve got my money.
However, if the Web site traffic maven were to come and tell me that my column got only two page hits, I would be devastated.
I would be more devastated if InfoWorld didn’t come through with the paycheck, but not having anyone read the column hurts
a lot too.
Getting back to music, suppose I download the four CD tracks I like from the Internet? Is the record company better or worse off?
It’s not worse off, because I wasn’t going to buy the CD anyway. It may be better off, because I just may buy the next CD the artist
puts out if I like this one. Or I may tell someone about it, who might then go out and buy the CD.
How about the artist? The artist is definitely not worse off, because I wasn’t going to buy the CD anyway. So he or she isn’t losing
anything. But, in the sense of having someone appreciate the performance, the artist is definitely better off. There may be some
artists who don’t care at all about audience appreciation, but if all a performer is interested in is the money, I suspect I wouldn’t
even be downloading the music.
So putting aside legal considerations, the ethical question at hand is, “Have I harmed anyone?” That is, have I set back any of
their important interests without justification? Because I have no obligation to buy a CD, if I don’t want one, it’s hard to say that
I have harmed either the artist or the recording company by not buying the CD. And in downloading the music, I may have
advanced at least one of the artist’s interests because I am listening to the music.
On the other hand, if I am downloading or sharing the music to avoid otherwise buying the CD, then you could say that I was
harming both the artist and the recording company because I was depriving them of income they otherwise would have had—
my money. And that makes all the difference.
The fly in the ointment lies in who determines whether or not I would have bought the CD. You certainly don’t know and neither
does the recording company. I may think I know, but we have a remarkable ability to deceive ourselves, especially when self
interest is involved.
Carlton Vogt is a former InfoWorld editor.
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Writing Activity
Writing a Summary: To write an effective
summary, start by listing the main points of the
text, in effect outlining what you are reading. Remember, however, that a summary is more than
just a list; a summary provides a brief narrative
structure that connects these main ideas.
Summarizing
“Downloading Music:
Harmful to the Artist,
the Recording Company,
or Neither?”
STEPS FOR WRITING A SUMMARY
I
1. Read the text relatively quickly to get a general
sense of what it is saying.
n no more than one page, summarize
“Downloading Music: Harmful to the
Artist, the Recording Company, or Neither?” (page 29). If your instructor asks
you to, share your summary with several of your classmates.
2. Read the text again. Mark or highlight a sentence
that expresses the main point of each paragraph,
and paraphrase that point—put it entirely into
your own words—in the margin.
3. For a longer text, label the major sections. If the
writer has provided subheadings, use them as they are or paraphrase
them. If not, write subheadings.
4. After considering what you have done in the first three steps, write a
statement that captures the writer’s main point or thesis.
5. Working backward from step 4, craft a paragraph—in your own words—
that captures the gist of what the writer is saying.
Synthesizing Information in Readings
Synthesis calls for the thoughtful combination or integration of ideas and
information with your point of view.
Suppose that you would like to see a particular movie this Saturday. You
hope to convince a group of your friends to accompany you. You have read
several reviews of the film, you know other work by the director, and you have
even read the novel on which this movie is based. At the same time, simply
sending your friends all the information you have about the film might overwhelm them. Unless you effectively structure what you have to say, one piece
of information may contradict some other point that you want to make.
To organize your information, you could focus on what you see as the most
compelling reasons your friends should see the film: the novel the film is based
on, along with the director of the movie. You would then provide information
on the following:
• How interesting the novel is, with specific examples to show what
you mean
• How effectively the novel has been translated to film, using reviews or
other information about the film as evidence
• Other films by the same director that you know your friends like
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When you synthesize effectively, you take the jumble of facts, data, information, and other knowledge you have on hand and put it into an understandable format that fulfills the purpose you want to accomplish. And, of
course, when you cite reviewers’ opinions (in the hope of convincing your
friends which movie to see), you will need to indicate where the comments
came from—to properly attribute what the reviewers had to say and to lend
their authority to your argument. Failure to properly attribute ideas to original
sources constitutes plagiarism.
As we have noted, to fully understand information and then be able to
synthesize it effectively, you must read critically, questioning, challenging,
and engaging the text as you work through it. One strategy that will help you
improve your critical thinking and reading is to work with others. When you
work with your classmates, you hear their perspectives and ideas and have the
opportunity to consider various points of view. Working with others also helps
you learn to construct the most effective questions to ask, to help you become
an active reader.
Using Your Reading in Your Writing
Information that you find in your reading can be used in many ways in your
writing. If you have annotated the texts that your instructor asked you to read
for a writing project in this course or another course, you can often use those
annotations in your own writing. Likewise, if you have summarized sources
for a research project, you can refer to and use those summaries to spot the important points of each text you have read, and then use relevant information
as evidence to support your main idea. If you have found statistical information in graphical form, or photographs, drawings, maps, or other illustrations,
these too can become part of your text. Of course, it is always important to
Writing Activity
Synthesizing Information
U
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sing what you have learned from this chapter on critical reading
and synthesizing information, reread “The Ethics of ‘Stealing’ a
WiFi Connection” (page 19) and “Downloading Music: Harmful to
the Artist, the Recording Company, or Neither?” (page 29). Both readings
involve ethical issues: Synthesize the issues outlined in these readings in
no more than two pages. Remember that a synthesis is a thoughtful integration of your readings with your own point of view. Where do you
stand on these ethical dilemmas? What else have you read in your college
classes that relates to these ethical situations?
31
For more on avoiding
plagiarism, see
Chapter 20.
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indicate where you found information, whose ideas you use in your text, and
where statistical information came from in order to establish your credibility
and avoid plagiarizing—representing the words or ideas of others as your own
ideas or words.
In the chapters in Parts 2 and 3 of this book, you will read various selections. As you read these texts or conduct library and/or Web research to fi nd
support for your writing, you will find it helpful to use the reading strategies
described in this chapter.
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Chapter
p
8
Writing to Convince
that he or she should accept your
How do I set my goals?
Setting Your Goals (p. 224)
How do I achieve my goals?
Rhetorical Knowledge (p. 226)
Critical Thinking, Reading,
and Writing (p. 229)
Writing Processes (p. 243)
Knowledge of Conventions
(p. 258)
particular point of view. In fact,
most purposes for writing—to
inform, to explain, to analyze—
to some degree almost always
involve persuasion.
You encounter persuasive
writing—writing designed to
convince readers to agree with
How do I assess my goals?
the writer’s position—many
Self-Assessment: Reflecting
on Your Goals (p. 264)
times a day. Notice, for example,
the persuasive appeals in the
advertisement here. The top
Think of the last time you wrote
something. Whether it was a
formal academic paper, a letter,
or an informal note such as a text
message to a friend, your writing was most likely designed to
convince someone about something—to persuade your reader
line noting that Monte Alban is
“The oldest city of the Americas”
is an ethical appeal because it
shows that the ad writers are
knowledgeable about the area’s
history. The same holds true for
the details that appear below
the photograph. At the same
time, these historical details
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can be considered logical appeals because they are pieces
of information. “Live the
mystery” is, of course, an
emotional appeal, as is
the color photograph
that showcases the
breathtaking beauty
of Monte Alban.
How effectively does
this advertisement
convince you to visit
this place?
Advertisements, of
course, are clearly intended
to convince the reader to buy
something—a product or service
advertisement or a newspaper
or trip to Mexico. For most of the
editorial, but the strategies that
persuasive writing you will do,
you will use to assert your point
you will have a more limited au-
of view and persuade readers are
dience than the audience for an
the same.
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Setting Your Goals:
Rhetorical Knowledge
• Audience: When you write to convince your readers, your success will depend
on how accurately you have analyzed your audience: their knowledge of and
attitudes toward your topic.
• Purpose: A convincing text is meant to persuade readers to accept your point
of view, but it can also include an element of action—what you want readers to
do once you’ve convinced them.
• Rhetorical situation: Think about all of the factors that affect where you stand
in relation to your subject—you (the writer), your readers (the audience), the
topic (the issue you are writing about), your purpose (what you wish to accomplish), and the exigency (what is compelling you to write your persuasive
essay).
• Voice and tone: When you write to persuade, you are trying to convince readers to think or act in a certain way. The tone you use will influence how they
react to your writing: Consider how you want to sound to your readers. If your
tone is subdued and natural, will that convince your readers? If you come
across as loud and shrill, will that convince your readers?
• Context, medium, and genre: Decide on the most effective medium and genre
to present your persuasive essay to the audience you want to reach. Often, you
can use photographs, tables, charts, and graphs as well as words to provide
evidence that supports your position.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
• Learning/inquiry: Writing to persuade helps you learn the important arguments on all sides of an issue, so such writing deepens your understanding.
• Responsibility: As you prepare to write persuasively, you will naturally begin
to think critically about your position on the subject you are writing about,
forcing you to examine your initial ideas, based on what you learn through
your research. Persuasive writing, then, is a way of learning and growing, not
just of presenting information.
• Reading and research: You will usually need to conduct interviews and online
and library research to gather evidence to support the claims you are making
in your persuasive writing.
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Writing to Convince
8
Writing Processes
• Invention: Use various invention activities, such as brainstorming, listing, and
clustering, to help you consider the arguments that you might use to support
your persuasive essay or the opposing arguments you need to accommodate or
refute.
• Organizing your ideas and details: Most often, you will state the main point—
your thesis—clearly at the start of your persuasive essay and then present
the evidence supporting that point. Other methods of organization are useful,
however, depending on your audience and context.
• Revising: Read your work with a critical eye to make certain that it fulfills the
assignment and displays the qualities of effective persuasive writing.
• Working with peers: Listen to your classmates as they tell you how much you
have persuaded them, and why. They will give you useful advice on how to
make your essay more persuasive and, therefore, more effective.
Knowledge of Conventions
• Editing: Citing sources correctly adds authority to your persuasive writing.
The round-robin activity on page 259 will help you edit your work to correct
problems with your in-text citations and your works-cited or references list.
• Genres for persuasive writing: Possible genres include academic essays,
editorials, position papers, letters to the editor, newspaper and magazine essays—even e-mails or letters you might send to friends or family members to
persuade them about a problem or issue.
• Documentation: You will probably need to rely on sources outside of your experience, and if you are writing an academic essay, you will be required to cite
them using the appropriate documentation style.
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Writing to Convince
Tutorial QL8001
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8 | Writing to Convince
Rhetorical Knowledge
When you write to persuade, you need to have a specific purpose in mind, a
strong sense of your audience, and an idea of what might be an effective way
to persuade that audience. You need to make a point and provide evidence to
support that point, with the goal of persuading your readers to agree with your
position.
Writing to Convince in Your College Classes
Many—if not most—of the papers you will be asked to write for your college
classes will be persuasive. Although your college assignments will often specifically require that you inform or analyze, they will frequently include an element of persuasion. Here are some examples:
• In a literature course, your instructor might ask you to argue that the
concept of the Oedipal complex is appropriate for analyzing Hamlet’s
behavior.
• Your sociology professor might ask you to develop and support a thesis
about deviant behavior in prisons.
• Your mechanical engineering professor might ask you to argue for or
against using a particular material in a specific situation.
Writing to Convince for Life
Although persuasive writing is common in college and university courses, it
plays an even larger role in professional, civic, and personal settings. Consider
these examples of professional writing:
• A product development team needs to convince company executives to
manufacture a product it has designed and tested.
• A paralegal needs to ask fellow members of the local legal community to
work pro bono (for free) for a specific group.
• A division manager needs to convince the human resources manager to
hire a particular applicant.
Persuasive writing is also present in civic settings. Civic leaders and other
participants in the political process—mayors, city council members, school
board members, town supervisors, volunteers, and ordinary citizens—are all
involved in persuasion. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a political process
without persuasion as its major component. For instance, concerned citizens
might write to their city council to argue that a stop light needs to be installed
at an intersection where many accidents have occurred.
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227
In personal settings, you constantly negotiate with those around you as
you make life decisions, often working to convince others that your views and
ideas are most effective. For example, you might write to persuade a family
member to send you money for tuition. Or you might write to a friend or family member to encourage him or her to have a medical test if that person is
having trouble making a decision.
The “Ways of Writing” feature presents different genres that can be used
when writing to convince in life.
Ways of Writing to Convince
Genres for Your
College Classes
Sample Situation
Advantages
of this Genre
Limitations
of the Genre
History essay
Your world history professor asks
you to construct a paper in which
you argue that specific events
caused the Iraq war of 2003.
Your research will provide
documented details of what led
up to the war. It will help your
readers understand the causal
relationships.
Your essay may not give a
broad enough overview to
give readers an idea of how
the war might have been
prevented.
Letter to
your campus
newspaper
Your political science professor
asks you to send a letter to your
college newspaper, encouraging
your classmates to change the
form of student government.
Anything published in a college
newspaper will have a wide
audience of people who have an
interest in campus affairs.
You will have to make
your argument in a limited
amount of space. It might
not be published.
Editorial for your
local newspaper
For your writing class, you are
asked to construct an editorial responding to public criticism about
your campus: Students driving
fast through neighborhoods, loud
parties at student-occupied apartment buildings, and so on.
Editorials are read by a local
audience and are therefore useful for convincing local readers
about an issue that is important
to them.
You will have to make
your argument in a limited
amount of space and without visuals. It might not be
published.
Oral presentation
Your environmental science professor asks you to prepare a tenminute speech that convinces your
classmates to attend a rally for a
community clean-up.
Talking to your audience gives
you the opportunity to engage them and gauge their
involvement.
Some listeners will “tune
out” so you have to work to
keep their attention.
Genres for Life
Sample Situation
Advantages
of the Genre
Limitations
of the Genre
Brochure
With several of your neighbors,
you want to construct a brochure
that presents the benefits of raising taxes for your local schools.
A brochure can provide a quick
overview of the arguments in
favor of a tax increase.
Your argument must be presented in a limited amount
of space.
Business letter
Your business is moving to a neighboring state, and you want as many
employees as possible to make the
move with your company.
A letter is a personalized way to
explain the benefits of the new
location.
Asking employees to make
such a move is a difficult
task; a letter might be too
brief to be convincing.
Poster
To encourage people to attend
an upcoming school event, you
construct a poster that you will
copy and place in various locations
on campus.
A poster is a visual way to get
readers interested. Posters can
be placed in many places, ensuring exposure to your message.
A limited number of people
will see and read the posters.
Web site
You want to create a Web site that
will convince your community to
vote for a mayoral candidate.
Your Web site can provide useful information for a particular
demographic that is otherwise
difficult to reach.
Some readers will only skim
a Web site and not all have
access.
Job application
cover letter
You need to construct a cover letter in response to a job ad.
A cover letter lets you discuss and
explain your background and
experiences in a positive way,
specific to the particular job.
Your background might not
be a good match for the job
forcing you to “stretch” in
your letter.
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Writer’s Workshop:
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to Persuasive Writing
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``` Scenarios for Writing | Assignment Options
Your instructor may ask you to complete one or both of the following assignments that call for persuasive writing. Each of these assignments is in the form
of a scenario, which gives you a sense of who your audience is and what you
need to accomplish with your persuasive writing.
Starting on page 243, you will find guidelines for completing whatever
scenario you decide—or are asked—to complete.
` Writing for College
SCENARIO 1
Academic Argument about a Controversial Issue
What controversial issues have you learned about in other college classes?
Here are some possibilities:
• Political science: In what ways did the ethical issues some senators and
members of the House of Representatives faced immediately before the
2006 election affect the results of that election?
• Business ethics: How effective is the threat of criminal punishment in
preventing insider trading of stocks?
• Psychology: How should the courts use the concept of insanity to determine culpability in criminal cases?
Writing Assignment: Select a controversial issue or problem from one of
your classes, and compose a paper convincing readers in that class that your
position on the issue is valid.
` Writing for Life
SCENARIO 2 Civic Writing: An Editorial
about a Campus–Community Problem
Every college campus has problems, ranging from scarce parking to overcrowded computer labs, to too much vehicle traffic, to too little community
involvement. Many of these problems, such as too much traffic, extend into
the neighborhoods near the campus.
Writing Assignment: Using the list of features of an editorial on page 239,
write an editorial for your school newspaper in which you identify a campus
problem that also affects the surrounding community and then persuade
your readers that the problem exists and that it needs to be taken seriously.
Although you need to do more than simply provide information about the
problem (that is an informative paper, covered in Chapter 6), you do not need
to suggest detailed solutions to the problem (that is a proposal, covered in
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229
Chapter 11). Your goal is to convince your readers that
your campus has a problem and that this problem has a
negative impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.
Rhetorical Considerations
in Persuasive Writing
• Audience: Although your instructor and classmates
are your initial audience for this assignment, you
might also consider other audiences for your persuasive writing. What would you like them to
believe or do? How might they respond to your
argument? How might you best convince them?
• Purpose: Your main purpose is to make your audience aware of the issue and to convince them
that it is significant and that your position is the
most reasonable one. How can you do this? You
might also want to convince them to do something about it. What are different ways to accomplish this?
• Voice, tone, and point of view: Why are you interested in the issue? What are your attitudes toward the issue and the audience? How will you
convey those attitudes to your audience?
Insufficient parking is an issue at many
college campuses, especially those located
within cities.
• Context, medium, and genre: Although you are writing this persuasive
paper to fulfill a college assignment, most issues worth writing about
are important beyond the classroom. How might your views make a difference to your community? Keeping the context of the assignment in
mind, decide on the most appropriate medium and genre for your writing. If you are writing for an audience beyond the classroom, consider
what will be the most effective way to present your argument to this audience. You might write an e-mail message to a friend, prepare a memo
for colleagues at work, or write a brochure or op-ed piece for members
of your community.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
As we have seen, effective persuasive writing focuses on an issue and provides
sufficient and compelling evidence to convince readers that the writer’s position on that issue is correct, or at least worthy of respect. Before you begin to
write your own persuasive paper, read one or more persuasive essays to get a
feel for this kind of writing. Also consider how visuals could make your writing
more convincing, as well as the kinds of sources you will need to consult.
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Additional Scenarios
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For more on choosing
a medium and genre,
see Chapter 17.
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For more on gathering
and evaluating
information
from sources, see
Chapter 19.
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When you write to convince, you will often need to draw on material from
other sources by conducting research. To research effectively, you must read
the material critically and evaluate it carefully, to make certain that the evidence you are offering as proof adequately supports your claims. Of course,
thinking critically also means that you need to consider other points of view
about your issue and decide whether those views are compatible or in conflict
with your own position.
Learning the Qualities of Effective Persuasive Writing
Much of the writing that you do is intended to convince someone to agree with
you about something, typically about an issue. An issue is a subject or problem
area that people care about and about which they hold differing views. Issues
of current concern in the United States include tax cuts, campaign finance
reform, and school vouchers. Subjects about which people tend to agree—for
example, the importance of education in general—are not usually worth writing arguments about.
Persuasive writing that achieves the goal of convincing readers has the following qualities:
• Presentation of the issue. Present your issue in a way that will grab
your readers’ attention and help them understand that the issue exists
and that they should be concerned about it. For example, if you are attempting to convince buyers to purchase cell phones with antivirus
protection, you first need to demonstrate the prevalence of cell phone
viruses. Another way to present the issue is to share an anecdote about
it or to offer some statistics that clearly demonstrate the existence and
danger of viruses.
• A clearly stated, arguable claim. A claim is the assertion you are making about the issue. Your claim should be clear, of course; a confusing
claim will not convince readers. Any claim worth writing about also
PoliticalDiscussion Posts
One way to see argumentation and persuasion in action is to look at politicaldiscussion posts on news Web sites.
Choose a topic thread or news article,
and, as you skim or read the posts, ask
yourself three questions about each
post: (1) How much credibility does the
writer seem to have as a person (ethos)?
(2) How does the writer use reason and
logic to make his or her points (logos)?
(3) What is your emotional reaction to
the writer’s remarks (pathos)? You can
determine the weight a writer’s comments probably carry with others by
assessing that writer’s credibility, reasoning, and emotional integrity. Be sure
to assess the language writers use in response to each other as well.
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needs to be arguable: a statement about which reasonable people may
disagree. For example, “All cell phone users should purchase antivirus
software” is an arguable claim; a reader could disagree by saying, “Cell
phone viruses are not a major threat.” However, no one would disagree
with the statement “Computer viruses can be annoying and disruptive.”
Therefore, it is not arguable and so is not an effective claim for a piece of
persuasive writing.
• An awareness of audience. Because your task as a writer is to convince
other people, it is crucial to be aware of the needs, situations, and perspectives of your audience. In any audience, you can expect some members to be more open to your claim than others:
• If someone already agrees with you, persuasion is unnecessary.
• If someone mildly disagrees with you or is undecided, persuasion has
a good chance of working.
• If someone strongly disagrees with you, there is little chance that persuasion will work.
• Convincing reasons. Writers of convincing arguments offer support for
what they are asking their reader to believe or to do. Think of the reasons you use to support your point as the other part of a because statement, with the claim being the first part. Here’s an example: “Animal
fur should not be used in clothing because synthetic fur is available and
looks like real fur.”
• Sufficient evidence for each reason. After considering the degree to
which the audience agrees or disagrees with your claim, provide enough
evidence, and the right kind(s) of evidence to convince your readers and,
if applicable, persuade them to act accordingly. Evidence includes statistics, expert opinion, examples, and anecdotes (stories).
• Appeals based on the writer’s logic, emotion, and character. Effective
persuasive writers carefully decide when to use three kinds of appeals—
logos (appeals based on logic), pathos (appeals to the audience’s emotions),
and ethos (appeals based on the writer’s character or credibility). Appeals
based on logic are generally the most effective. Emotional appeals can
be effective with audience members who are predisposed to accept your
claims. Appealing to an audience’s emotions is risky, however, because
critical thinkers will reject this type of appeal unless it is accompanied
by logical and ethical appeals. Appeals based on the writer’s authority
and credibility—ethical appeals—can be powerful, especially when coupled with logical appeals.
• An honest discussion of other views. For any arguable claim or thesis,
there will be at least one other point of view besides yours. To be effective,
the writer of a persuasive text needs to acknowledge and deal with possible
objections from the other side. You already make this kind of counterargument naturally. For example, when you are told that you “cannot register
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For more on strategies
for argument,
including dealing with
opposing views, see
Chapter 14.
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for this course because you have not completed the prerequisite,” you probably already have an answer to that objection such as, “You’re right, but I received approval from the dean because of my prior professional experience.”
If you think that another perspective has merit, you should certainly
acknowledge it and even concede that it is valid. Another possibility is a
Rogerian approach (see Chapter 14), in which both sides negotiate a compromise position. Perhaps you can offer a compromise by incorporating
aspects of the other perspective into your thesis. Of course, if other perspectives on your issue are without merit, you will need to refute them by
indicating how they are inappropriate, inadequate, or ineffective.
• A desired result. The goal of persuasive writing is to convince readers
to change their minds about an issue or at least to give your view serious consideration. Often the goal is to get your reader to act in some
way—vote for a candidate, write a letter to the school board, or buy some
product.
Reading, Inquiry, and Research:
Learning from Texts That Persuade
The readings that follow are examples of persuasive writing. As you read the persuasive selections your instructor assigns, consider the following questions:
• What makes this selection convincing?
• To what extent am I convinced by the writer’s reasons and evidence?
Why?
• What parts of the selection could be improved? In what ways?
• How can I use the techniques of persuasive writing exemplified here in
my writing?
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MAUREEN DOWD
Our Own Warrior Princess
J
EDITORIAL
ennifer showed me her scar Friday. It’s the most 1
Maureen Dowd
beautiful scar I’ve ever seen. A huge stapled gash
won the Puliton her stomach, shaped like the Mercedes logo. A
zer Prize for
red badge of courage. Jennifer is my niece, a 33-yearCommentary
old lawyer. On Wednesday, she had half her liver
in 1999. In
1992, she
taken out at Georgetown University Hospital to
received the
save the life of her uncle (my brother Michael), who
Breakthrough
had gotten hepatitis years ago from a tainted blood
Award from
transfusion.
Women, Men and
d
The complicated and risky operation for the 2 Media at Columbia
bia
University. She won the Matrix
two, side by side, went from 7:30 am. until after 10
Award from New York Women in
pm. Then, when a Medivac helicopter arrived with a
Communications in 1994. In 1996,
matching liver for another patient, the same team of
she was named one of Glamour’s
doctors had to start on another emergency six-hour
Women of the Year. In 1992, she
liver transplant.
was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for
The night nurse told Jennifer she was an oddity. 3 national reporting.
In the following column, which
“We don’t see many live donors,” she said. “Not many
first appeared in the New York
people are that generous.”
Times on June 1, 2003, Dowd
Or brave. Jennifer’s morphine drip wasn’t at- 4 writes in a personal way about
tached properly the first night after the operation,
organ donation—telling the story
of what her niece, Jennifer, did
and no one knew it. She felt pain, but didn’t want to
to help her brother, Michael.
be a wimp by complaining too loudly. Instead, she
Although persuasive writing most
was Reaganesque, cracking jokes and wondering
often uses facts, statistics, and
where the cute doctors were.
hard evidence to make its case, as
She survived the fi rst night after this excruciat- 5 you read Dowd’s column, consider
how effective she is in using emoing operation au naturel, like Xena the Warrior Printional appeals to persuade you. Is
cess. If all goes well, her liver will grow whole again
Dowd’s column persuasive enough
in several weeks, as will Michael’s half.
for you to sign up to be an organ
Unlike her father, who charged people a nickel 6 donor? Why?
to see his appendix scar when he was 10, she let me
look for free. As we sat in her room, watching Mariah Carey singing with a bare midriff on the “Today”
show, I worried a little how she would take the disfigurement.
She’s a fitness fanatic, who works as a personal trainer in her spare 7
time. She’s single, out in the cruel dating world. And we live in an airbrush
culture, where women erase lines with Botox, wrinkles with lasers, and fat
with liposuction. I told Jen scars are sexy; consider that great love scene
in “Lethal Weapon 3” when Mel Gibson and Rene Russo, as police officers,
compare scars.
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Jennifer has every quality of heart, spirit, mind and body a woman
could want. She’s smart, funny, generous, loyal, principled, great looking
and, obviously, adventurous.
“Write a column about me,” she smiled, tubes coming out of every
part of her body, as I left her room.
I knew what she meant. She didn’t want me to write about her guts,
but to encourage others to have the guts to donate organs. When she came
to, she asked for the green ribbon pin that encourages organ donation. Her
exquisite doll-like transplant surgeon, Dr. Amy Lu, in white coat and black
high-heeled mules, still on the job after 21 hours in the operating room,
removed her pin and gave it to Jennifer.
As Neal Conan said on NPR Thursday: “More than 80,000 Americans
are on waiting lists for organ donations, and most will never get them.
Thousands on those lists die every year. One big reason for the shortage
is that families are reluctant to give up their relatives’ organs. Even when
people fi lled out a donor card or checked the organ donor box on their
driver’s license, family members often refuse. The need is so acute and so
frustrating that more and more doctors are wondering whether financial
incentives might persuade some families to change their minds and save
lives.” (Iran has wiped out its kidney transplant wait by offering rewards.)
As the New York Organ Donor Network Web site notes: “One donor can
save up to eight lives through organ donation and improve dozens of lives
through corneal, bone, skin and other tissue transplants. Across the U.S.,
17 men, women and children of all races and ethnic backgrounds die every
day for lack of a donated organ.”
I’m one of the scaredy-cats who never checked the organ donation box
or fi lled out the organ and tissue donor card.
Some people don’t do it because they have irrational fears that doctors
will be so eager to harvest their organs, they’ll receive subpar care after
an accident.
I had nutty fears, too, straight out of a Robin Cook medical thriller,
that they might come and pluck out my eyes or grab my kidney before I
was through with them.
On Friday, Michael’s birthday, I got the card online, fi lled it out and
stuck it in my wallet. If Jennifer is brave enough to do it alive, how can I be
scared of doing it dead?
From The New York Times, June 1, 2003 © 2003 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written
permission is prohibited.
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235
BRIAN J. G. PEREIRA, M.D.
Letter Responding to Dowd
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
T
o the Editor:
Re “Our Own Warrior Princess” (column, June 1):
Maureen Dowd’s inspiring story of her niece’s
live liver donation points to an emerging trend in
transplantation.
The year 2001 was the first in which there were
more living donors than nonliving donors in the
United States. Because of new techniques for kidney
removal and the medical success of live liver transplantation, more people are considering saving lives
through organ donation while they are alive.
A recent survey by the National Kidney Foundation found that one in four Americans would consider donating a kidney or a piece of their liver or
lung to a complete stranger.
This is not just talk. The real numbers are encouraging. In 2002, 353 people became living liver
donors, and 6,234 were live kidney donors.
While the need for organ donors continues to
grow, people like Ms. Dowd’s niece represent hope
for a future when the transplant waiting list will
cease to exist.
BRIAN J. G. PEREIRA, M.D.
Pres., National Kidney Foundation
Boston, June 2, 2003
New York Times
1
2
3
4
5
Brian Pereira is
a professor of
medicine at
the Tufts University School
of Medicine.
Dr. Pereira is a
nationally recognized expert
on kidney disease
e
and nephrology. He
is the president of the National
Kidney Foundation and chairman
of the International Nephrology
Network, and he has served on the
editorial board of many scientific
journals. Dr. Pereira also serves
as a director of Kidney Care Partners, Wellbound Inc., and Satellite
Health Care Inc.
This letter, in response to
Dowd’s essay, appeared in the
New York Times a few days after
Dowd’s column was published.
After reading Dowd’s column and
Pereira’s response, would you
ever consider being a living organ
donor? Why?
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QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION
Rhetorical Knowledge: The Writer’s
Situation and Rhetoric
1. Audience: How effective is Dowd in reaching the audience for whom this information
is intended—someone reading the New York
Times and perhaps interested in organ donation? What can you point to in Dowd’s column to demonstrate what you mean?
a letter to the editor, the writer often focuses on
how much he or she agrees or disagrees with
an editorial. How does Dr. Pereira do that?
Critical Thinking: The Writer’s Ideas
and Your Personal Response
6. How has Dowd’s column affected your views
about becoming an organ donor?
2. Purpose: In what area of life (academic, professional, civic, personal) does “Our Own
Warrior Princess” best fit? What is Dowd trying to convince the reader to believe or do?
What can you point to in the column to support your opinion?
7. Consider other persuasive writing that you
have read. In what way(s) are they similar to
or different from Dowd’s column?
3. Voice and tone: What is Dowd’s attitude
toward people who don’t offer to donate organs? How does she attempt to reach them?
8. How does Dowd establish her ethos in this article? How does Pereira establish his ethos in
his letter?
4. Responsibility: Dowd’s primary evidence consists of the story of her niece’s sacrifice, which
is an emotional appeal to her readers. How
justified is Dowd’s use of pathos—an appeal to
readers’ emotions? How effective is it? Why?
9. Dowd uses a personal story to make her point.
How effective is this writing strategy? Why?
5. Context, format, and genre: Newspaper columns such as Dowd’s have specific length limits (as compared to, say, an essay that might
appear in a journal). How might such a form
constrain Dowd? How might it benefit her? In
Composing Processes and Knowledge
of Conventions: The Writer’s Strategies
Inquiry and Research: Ideas
for Further Exploration
10. What questions do you still have about organ donation? Where can you go to get answers to those questions?
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Organ
Orga
g n Donation
Although Allsup, Inc. is a corporation that assists people
seeking Social Security benefits, it sometimes runs public-service campaigns, such as the one below for organ
donation. Most readers would assume the mother in this
photograph was donating an organ for her child. But
what if it was the other way around? Would you support
a child donating an organ to a parent? Why?
ADVERTISEMENT
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QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION: LEARNING OUTCOMES
Rhetorical Knowledge: The Writer’s
Situation and Rhetoric
1. Audience: Who is the audience for this advertisement? What makes you think that?
2. Purpose: What language in the poster most
clearly indicates the purpose of the advertisement?
3. Voice and tone: What attitude does Allsup
have toward the audience?
4. Responsibility: To whom does Allsup seem
to feel responsible?
5. Context, format, and genre: Why is it fitting
that this advertisement include a chalkboard?
Advertisements that appear on posters or in
other venues frequently include visual elements such as photos. What does the photo
add to this advertisement?
Critical Thinking: The Writer’s Ideas
and Your Personal Response
6. How persuasive do you find this advertisement? Why?
7. How do the persuasive features of this advertisement compare to those in Dowd’s essay
earlier in this chapter?
Composing Processes and Knowledge
of Conventions: The Writer’s Strategies
8. Why does the advertisement include the numerical information that appears at the
bottom?
9. Why does the advertisement use the relatively informal contraction “You’re” instead
of the more formal “You are”?
Inquiry and Research: Ideas
for Further Exploration
10. Conduct a Web search to find other advertisements for organ donation. How do their
appeals (ethos, logos, pathos) compare to the
appeals in this advertisement?
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GENRES Up Close Writing an Editorial
Writers use a range of genres to convince in professional, civic, and personal situations
that include editorials/opinion pieces, position papers, job reference letters, and business letters. For example, editorials are appropriate when you want to convince readers
that you have a valid position on a controversial or debatable topic. An op-ed piece is
one that appears on the page opposite the editorial page in a newspaper or magazine;
thus “op-ed” is short for “opposite editorial.” However, it can also mean “opinions and
editorials.”
Features of effective op-eds or editorial letters include the following:
• They usually respond to a previously published article in a newspaper.
• They are usually short (250–800 words).
239
GENRES UP CLOSE
Reflection (p. 11)
Rhetorical Analysis
(p. 21)
Audience Profile (p. 36)
Literacy Narrative (p. 65)
Profile (p. 110)
Annotated Bibliography/
Review of Literature
(p. 152)
Visual Analysis (p. 198)
Editorial (p. 239)
Review (p. 281)
Poster (p. 329)
Proposal (p. 378)
Book Review (p. 419)
• They include an opinion or stance.
• They make a point in the first few sentences.
• They indicate why the issue is important.
• They show respect for other points of view.
• They suggest or imply an action that readers can take.
As you read the following example of an editorial, consider in what ways Emrich’s
text matches the description above of an op-ed piece.
38
Roen−Glau−Maid: The
III. Using What You’ve
8. Writing to Convince
The Brief MH Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life
McGraw−Hill Guide:
Learned to Write
Writing for College,
Arguments
Writing for Life, 2/e
240
PART 3 | Using What You Have Learned to Write Arguments ■
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2011
8 | Writing to Convince
LIZ EMRICH
EDITORIAL
Makes the main
point in the first few
sentences.
A
recent discussion by Rob St. Amant about
unfortunate Halloween costumes reminded
me of one of my personal pet peeves about Halloween—the fact that it has now become the excuse that girls (and women) use to don outfits
that in their normal lives would be considered
way, way, WAY too risque.
Personally, I’ve never understood it. I’m perfectly happy to flaunt what I’ve got—to a point.
The fact is that desire is always about what one
doesn’t have, which means that desire will always
obsess more over what is suggested but cannot be
seen than what is displayed openly. The obvious
bid for sexual attention embodied by a tiny skirt
and a plunging neckline and four inch stilettos to
me seems overkill.
Grown women, of course, may do what they please. Frankly I think it’s
rather funny the way many of
the women I know who would
not be caught dead showing up
in anything that even breathed
a hint of cleavage during the
rest of the year will gladly don
an up-to-there skirt and fishnet stockings in order to walk
the streets with their four year
old, or to attend a party in the
neighborhood. Sexual repression is very much alive and
well here in suburbia. No one
wants to be the “slutty mom”
whose tops are cut too low,
whose skirts are too tight, and
who all the dads raise an eyebrow at and wonder if she’s really as easy as her clothes are
supposedly suggesting. Halloween seems to be the release
valve for all those moms who
Liz Emrich lives in
Virginia, where
Vi
sshe writes a
blog for Salon
b
..Com. She has
also worked as
a
a lawyer. We
chose this readch
ing because it
focuses on a profocus
problem—one
vocative p
that many female students might
personally relate to and have
strong opinions about.
Responds to a previously published
article.
Slut-O-Ween
1
2
3
Roen−Glau−Maid: The
McGraw−Hill Guide:
Writing for College,
Writing for Life, 2/e
III. Using What You’ve
Learned to Write
Arguments
39
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2011
8. Writing to Convince
The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition
Learning from Texts That Persuade
■
PART 3 | Using What You Have Learned to Write Arguments
checked their sexuality at the door when they gave birth—their one opportunity to remind themselves of how hot they used to think they were.
Kids, however, are another story. Walk the aisles at Target, and even
the costumes for little girls have a sexual element to them that I either
blocked out or don’t remember from my youth. Dressing up as a cat or a
witch or a cowgirl isn’t enough anymore. It must be a tarted-up version
of the costume in question. Cat costumes must consist of clingy leotards.
Cowgirls must have really short skirts. In fact, any costume involving a
skirt must be horrifically, inappropriately short.
Of course, the current trend in Halloween costumes for girls is not
the first or even the grossest incidence of inappropriate sexualization of
small girls and young women. Girls at younger and younger ages are seeking to wear clothing that makes them look way too grown up. And in some
respects, this is not new. Mothers have been trying to protect daughters
from being “vulgar” in how they dress for generations. Parents have worried about daughters “growing up too fast” since the days when showing
your ankles was considered akin to announcing yourself as a prostitute.
And for almost as long, daughters have tried to wheedle their way out of
these social constraints.
Indeed, owning your sexuality as a woman is an important part of
gender equality. Certainly for generations women were told they were supposed to stay virginal until marriage, and couldn’t even walk a...
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