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| Grassi, Irene, "Rock Balancing #3." 6/25/2014 via Flickr. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic |
1. Well-known and respected author, S.E. Smith, employs statistics, historical background, and humor throughout her article "How legalizing pot could save America's economy". These strategies are used in order to appeal to the values of her predominately American, whether they were originally supporters or opponents of legalizing marijuana, and make it seem as though legalization is the only option for prosperity in America from both logical and emotional standpoints.
2. The article "How legalizing pot could save America's economy", written by award winning novelist, S.E. Smith, contains statistics, historical background of prohibition, and humor, in order to portray the moral and economic need for marijuana to be legalized. Smith further achieves this goal by intertwining these rhetorical strategies in paragraphs that appeal to American values and beliefs.
Before starting the required reading for this blog post I was really nervous about how I was going to express my ideas within my analysis. However, after following the steps provided by the textbook and planning out my thoughts in an organized manner I am feeling way more confident about this project now, since the making of this post essentially forced me to layout my claims and examples from the text. I think that my first thesis statement is more effective than my second one, though I want to get feedback from my peers about this. Moving forward from this step my major concern is that each of my body paragraphs has a clear main idea or obviously appeal to beliefs in American culture, since I realize that I will be mentioning certain strategies in more than one my analytical paragraphs.
2. The article "How legalizing pot could save America's economy", written by award winning novelist, S.E. Smith, contains statistics, historical background of prohibition, and humor, in order to portray the moral and economic need for marijuana to be legalized. Smith further achieves this goal by intertwining these rhetorical strategies in paragraphs that appeal to American values and beliefs.
Before starting the required reading for this blog post I was really nervous about how I was going to express my ideas within my analysis. However, after following the steps provided by the textbook and planning out my thoughts in an organized manner I am feeling way more confident about this project now, since the making of this post essentially forced me to layout my claims and examples from the text. I think that my first thesis statement is more effective than my second one, though I want to get feedback from my peers about this. Moving forward from this step my major concern is that each of my body paragraphs has a clear main idea or obviously appeal to beliefs in American culture, since I realize that I will be mentioning certain strategies in more than one my analytical paragraphs.
Reflection:
I have learned a lot after reading and analyzing the drafts of thesis statements that Ann Emilie and Breanna included in their posts. My peers' theses made me confident in my appreciation of my first thesis. I learned from their drafted theses that finding a balance between being too specific in one's thesis can be an issue later in one's writing process, but not being specific enough can leave readers confused. However, I feel like my peers and my own strongest thesis statements achieve this crucial balance, thus I am confident in all of our's argumentative and analytical success in this project.
Thomas, your second thesis statement is very strong. It is well written and it does provide an analysis of the article. However, I don't believe there is a specific point you are arguing about article and its use of rhetorical strategies. Maybe there is but it is vague. There are a lot of similarities between your thesis statement and the one in the book but you stray slightly when it comes to whether or not you think the article is effective and why. Besides that, great start!
ReplyDeleteI feel like your theses are great in theory. I read them and I get a very clear understanding of what your purpose is and how you believe your author achieves their purpose. However, I feel as though they are too vague, and do not give any detail or insight into exactly how/why the author uses the strategies used.
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