English 101

Nov 5 | Nov 7 |

Proposal Arguments disscussed
[contributed by Tracy Hill]

Today in class we addressed a few issues. We went over unit 3 syllabus, readings/journals, proposal arguments, and December conferences. There are a few changes on the unit 3 syllabus... 1. For the reading tonight(11/5) read "The Private vs Public Debate" & "Claiming an Education." 2. Journal 2 is now journal 3 3. Journal 3 is now journal 2 **So tonight journal is "What is your issue" & "Persuasive focus." **It was advised that we do journals when assigned**

*The Proposal argument was also explained during most of class. A "simple" algerbraic equation for this is... We should(not) do "X". ie...We should pay an extra forty dollars for rebuilding the Student Union.

-You're trying to convince an audience to do what you want. To do this you should follow a simple form... ie...

(REMEMBER YOU'RE CONVINCING YOUR AUDIENCE)

[contributed by Jennifer Kennedy)
Wednesday November 5th, we talked about analyzing audiences, why the rhetorical analysis is important to this audience and the discussion of this shows throughout the unit on values and appeals, elements of effective persuasion and rhetorical purpose.

Today we also discussed what a proposal is and what it does... The purpose of a proposal arguement is to appeal to the audience in order to make them "do" something, we are not just presenting a view here. The proposal is to make the audience want to do something or no longer do something.

One of the examples that we used for the proposal is marriage. In this proposal we used S1 as the current situation and S2 as the proposed situation. First of all, we need to find out exactly how commited is the audience to staying with the S1 situation, and how willing are they to change. We must show the audience that S2 is definitely better than S1, by showing the "A" the benefits of the S2 situation. In all the S2 situation must overweigh the S1 situation in order for this proposal to work.

The values of the audience must be addressed to get them to do the ultimate thing, "CHANGE!"

November 7: Persuasion essay reading

By Brienne Weedon

11-7-97 Here's what happened in Friday's class:

• We first discussed Essay #3: The Persuasive Project.
  Danika clearly stated that the single goal of this unit was that it MUST be persuasive. A hand-out was given regarding this essay, the importance of it being persuasive, and a few ideas of how to do the project. This was looked over and described in further detail.
  The class also learned that the rhetorical analysis must be a persuasive argument to Danika, describing why your project was successful.
  
• Next, the class got into several groups to discuss the readings, "The Private vs. Public Debate" pages 23-27 and "Claiming an Education" pages 89-94.
  
  The current situation of "The Private vs. Public Debate" was that private schools were basically getting better results than those of public schools and that parents do not have a choice as to where their children attend.
  
  The proposal was for parents to be provided with a choice as to where their students attend and that public schools be market driven. The directed audience was policy makers, for they feel that the government needs to get the parents more involved.
  
  The consequences found for this proposal were that linking education to the economy would be sending a message that education no longer represents equality. However, the pros found for this proposal were of better teaching skills, therefore greater student skills, more parent invovlement, and the money situaion would be stable. The alternatives that were found were to address the teacher, local, and student levels, and to put responsibility on the individual.
  
  When discussing the second article, the class found that the current situation was that students were simply accepting their education; as Danika said, "Here's my money, give me my education". They were not "claiming" it as taking it as your right to gain an education, and acting on it.
  
  The first proposal was that students neeed to claim their education, and not simply accept it. The second proposal was that teachers of these universities need to not just assume that these students are unimportant, that they deserve to be taught an education that they take and go places with. The two proposals put expectations on both the student and teacher levels. That was all that was covered in the time permitted.
  
• Our rhetorical analysis papers were than given back to the class. * Danika also told everyone to bring an example of persuasive writing to class on Monday!*