Draft 1.

1: Preliminary Draft of Rhetorical Analysis

Objective: To demonstrate your ability to rhetorically analyze texts.
Purpose: In the first half of the course, you have been honing your writing skills so as to prepare you for
college level writing. You will use all of these skills, (summarizing, paraphrasing, critical reading,
constructing thesis statements, and using supporting material via quotations) throughout your writing of
this assignment.
Description: To complete this assignment, you will begin by selecting a text to analyze. You may choose
from the following:

"Do You Speak American?" Robert MacNeil, 306

"Why Good English is Good for You" John Simon, 332

"Lost in America" Douglas McGray, 351

After selecting your text and critically reading it, you will determine the writers purpose and
intended audience for the text.

Once you have determined these elements, you will begin to analyze the text so as to determine
the specific strategies (rhetorical choices) the writer uses to achieve his or her purpose and to
meet the needs of the audience. For example, you might choose to look at such elements as the types
of evidence a writer puts forward and how he or she does so. Ask yourself if the writer uses evidence from
sources, or if he or she tells stories from personal experience. Examine the sentence structures and word
choice. How do these contribute to the authors purpose? Evaluate the overall tone of the text, and
determine how it does or does not contribute to the way in which it communicates to its audience. After
you determine what these strategies or rhetorical choices are, consider how well these strategies
(rhetorical choices) actually work. As a result of this assignment, you should be able to take these
skills and transfer them to any reading you are asked to do in college, and you should see an
improvement in your ability to read and comprehend any text.

Although this is an initial draft, it should be carefully edited and written in a professional tone. Please use
MLA format for both your in-text citations and your works cited in this draft.

Your draft should be 1200 words in length.