Choose ONE of the assigned articles to evaluate from your textbook. You will find this list of articles in the link titled “Evaluation Reading Assignments.”
Paper Length: about 4 double spaced typed pages plus a Works Cited page.
NOTE: For this paper you only have to cite the article you are evaluating.
The outline should follow outline format.
When you read, consider the logical fallacies, the speaker, the time, and the validity of what you read along with the sources used to sell the thesis. Writers evaluate by careful consideration and by learning to speak back to the writing – going against the grain helps discover fallacies, omissions, bias, faulty ideas, etc.
This assignment offers practice in evaluating an article for its value, validity, and contribution to written communication. Select one of the assigned articles for the evaluation composition. Use one of the prewriting notes files to prepare for the outline.
Finally, this assignment is not a summary. If you summarize the article then you will fail this assignment.
Outline instructions
Use your outline as an opportunity to organize and develop ideas.
I do not want to see any complete sentences or paragraphs throughout your outline.
What my professor said about our essay:
Evaluation Essay
The ultimate goal of all literary study is evaluation. Evaluation, as applied to literature, means the act of deciding what is good, bad, or mediocre. Too often a good student will avoid making any judgments or commitments at all, though he or she feels comfortable describing the literary work he or she is writing about. Evaluation frequently requires taking a debatable position. This position must be obvious. Evaluation of articles in other genres can also contribute to understanding trends and societal norms. The value of popular topics can also be questioned since these often diminish with time. Also remember to use prewriting notes or reader response from the files in Unit 3 lecture.
Begin this essay using the same basic outline for all literary compositions. Include the name of the article, the writer, the time period, and a thesis focusing on the components for evaluation (listed below) to be explored in the essay. In evaluation, general response to how effective patterns are used with special attention to omissions, fallacies, and faulty reasoning will ‘drive’ the essay. Avoid summarizing until perhaps the closing of the essay after the evaluation has established and meshed why the article has value in written communication. For a relatively short composition of a minimum of three pages, a couple of components will suffice. However, tone and intended audience in the second paragraph should be an intregal part of any composition so choose at least two additional components for development.
Some components and standards used for evaluation are as follows. Begin the essay with the information for exposition followed by a thesis for evaluation.
1. Tone – discuss the tone and how it contributes to the overall piece. Does the article seem primarily to entertain, to enlighten, to convince, to preach, to twist, etc.
2. Intended Audience – Include some discussion of the probable intended audience and how that serves to expand general knowledge or limits the article.
3. Truth: Truth in writing means realism–consider if the thesis is logical and what approach (p. 43-44) it uses to appeal to the intended audience.
4. Unity: The joint force and full result of all the elements of the work would be taken into consideration. Each word and incident in the work contribute to the insight the reader has of the central ideas of the work. Consider if the article provides value to the reader’s body of knowledge.
5. Vitality: A good work of written communication has a life of its own.Vitality is also measured by the validity of the thesis, and how well it develops. Validity of the thesis, bias, and omissions contribute or detract from the value.
6. Style: The way in which a writer employs his or her words, phrases, and sentences to achieve his or her desired effects is style. Words that reflect style fit the situation created in the work: simple words, polysyllable words, technical words, particular parts of speech, sounds, rhythm. For phrases: type of phrases in sentences, number of phrases in sentences, variety of the phrases in sentences. For sentences: simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, fragments, declarative, questions, exclamations. Style helps explain how a writer uses writing techniques. The style can help explain why character is memorable, how setting contributes, etc. Use of dialogue also contributes to style.
7. Structure: The organization and arrangement of the work as a whole is structure. Use of setting, patterns, tone, evidence contribute to value. The setting component of an article also offers a specific link to evaluation since time and place often provide insight about the trends in vogue at that time and place. Writers often cannot write or think objectively out of their time.
8. Point of view: The narrator writes so readers will read. Writers have an agenda, a purpose, a message. How well the article meets those goals often relies on the credibility of the narrator. If the narrator seems unreliable because of bias, omissions, or logical fallacies, the value of the article diminishes.
9. Logic: The ideas and events(as developed using the patterns of development) of the article work to develop a logical sequence.
10. Diction: Style of speaking or writing as dependent upon word choice. An author’s word choice is the foundation of his or her writing. What are some unique word choices from the piece? Focus on a term’s denotative, (dictionary definition) and its connotative, (contextual definition) term. Words are not accidentally used. Everything is intentional!
11. Ethos: A speaker’s/writer’s credibility. What experiences or expertise qualifies the author to write about this topic?
12. Pathos: A speaker’s writer’s use of emotional appeals. How does the author use emotional appeals to enhance the message/argument? How do the emotional appeals connect to a potential audience?
13: Setting: Consider when and where the author wrote their text. What was the context when they wrote the article you are analyzing?
14: Argument Effectiveness: Ultimately, how effective was the author in presenting their argument?
Your evaluation will follow the basic format for beginning essays, and direct the thesis to specifically state evaluation.
DEVELOPMENTAL PARAGRAPHS
Following the basic format for body paragraphs, the topics of the internal paragraphs will be the qualities of the literary work that the student feels establish the worth of the article using the list above –select the details from the article that apply to the paragraph topics. Avoid summarizing the work until the concluding paragraphs.
CONCLUSION
The conclusion can encourage or alert readers to include the article for its specific contribution to the body of written communication as detailed in the essay.
SAMPLE THESIS STATEMENT (follows exposition information)
Dave Barry’s style offers an entertaining and truthful article that lends itelf to evaluation of patterns used to restate the age old thesis that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.
RESEARCH REQUIREMENTS:
Your final draft must be correctly formatted according to MLA standards. Your final draft must also include a Works Cited page that is correctly formatted, too.
