Defining “Essay”

Purpose

As we have been discussing, reading and writing are intrinsically linked. In this assignment you are going to find an essay to use as inspiration for your own writing and annotate that essay.

This essay is one that you will use as a model for your own writing. In other words, you will look to it, along with the material we are covering in class, to help you figure out what you’re doing. This essay does not need to be on the same topic you are choosing (although it can be). However, it should be an essay that, for whatever reason, you like. Maybe you like the way the author sounds in the essay. Maybe the subject is interesting to you. Maybe you like the way the text is organized or structured.

You will be returning again and again to this essay throughout this class. Becoming familiar with this essay now (and making annotations for your future self!) will save you time in the long run.

Course Goal

1. Apply key rhetorical concepts (writer, audience, subject, purpose, and context) in order to analyze and compose a variety of texts.
2. Analyze texts as purposeful responses to a variety of situations and contexts as well as products of social identity (e.g., gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and social class).
3. Demonstrate information competency by locating, reading, and evaluating a diverse range of primary and secondary research materials (both scholarly and popular) in order to synthesize original ideas with those from appropriate sources.

Module Goal

• Find an essay to use as inspiration in your own writing.
• Use rhetorical analysis as a writing and reading tool.

Antiracist Goals

There isn’t one “right” way to write, communicate, or organize ideas. Rather than providing a structure that values one way of thinking and doing, you are going to consider how and why you want to write by finding a text that you find inspiring.

Task Instructions

Step One: Find an Inspiration Essay

Find an essay as inspiration using the advice provided earlier in this weeks’ module.

Step Two: Annotate the Essay

Closely read and annotate your chosen essay. Your annotations can be ANYTHING, but it will help (hint, hint: you’ll be addressing these questions next week) if you consider the following:

• Why is the author writing on “this” topic or aspect of identity specifically? What in their life, in their family, in their communities, or in the world around them prompted them to write on what they did?  Exigency
• What overall argument and sub-arguments are they trying to make via the text? Arguments are often the “claims” the author is making in the text. Some are large and overarching (thesis like) and apply to the entire text, while others are smaller and may only apply to a portion of the text (sub points that in some way develop your overall argument).  Argument
• What does the author want their readers to “get out of” this text? In other words, what do they hope this text will achieve, its ultimate goal?  In sum, what do they want their readers to walk away thinking, feeling, believing, revaluating, or doing etc. Purpose
• To whom did the author write the text? What individuals or groups of individuals might benefit most from engaging with the piece and in what ways? Why did they choose these as their audiences? Are you the primary audience? What are the potential secondary or unintended audiences and why/in what ways? Audience
• In an attempt to reach their audiences, convey their message, and fulfill their purpose, navigate constraints, adhere to genre conventions etc, what choices did the author make or strategies did they use? These are also sometimes called “moves.” If you are struggling with these, they really are just the choices or decisions the author made about the text. Rhetorical Choices
• In what ways was the author trying to appeal to their audiences via their choices/strategies? Ethos (appeals to character or trustworthiness), Pathos (appeals to emotion for feeling), Logos (appeals to reason, logic, or critical thinking).
• What are some constraints they experienced when writing this text? What did they have to take into consideration when writing this text with regard to its genre, their audience, their subject matter, choices they made, their topic, their purpose, their writing environment, their process, their life etc?  How did they “navigate” or address this constraint? Explain a bit. Constraints

Tech support

There are many ways that you can annotate:

Option One: Use Markup Hero. This free PDF annotation tool will allow you to annotate any PDF and share your annotations. You will need to download your chosen essay as a PDF (you can do this by printing it to PDF). Then, follow the instructions on the Markup Hero website on how to upload and annotate your chosen text.

Option Two: Copy and paste your chosen essay into Word. Then annotate using the comments feature. Instructions on how to leave, edit, or delete comments is available here: Microsoft Support

Option Three: Print a hard copy of your model essay (you can print at any Pierce College library or computer labs), annotate by hand, and upload images of your annotations.

Option Four: Another way that makes sense to you.

Completion Criteria

Submit to complete this assignment.