Posts Tagged ‘Evaluation and Critique’

To practice thinking and writing about the idea of a research question, which is required for the research paper, please choose to focus on either “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie or “My Faith in Nonviolence” by Mohandas Gandhi and respond as a group to the following items about your selected text and post your response in a comment to this blog post:

1. Which text are you responding to and who is in your group?
2. An issue is more specific and more focused than a topic. Given the topic of exploring cultural identity, what specific issue(s) can you identify regarding cultural identity in this text?
3. What specific evidence (language, details, ideas) from the text creates this issue?
4. A research question, I would argue, is even more specific than an issue. Try to frame your response to item #2 above as a question that could generate further research.

Below is a photo of Sherman Alexie:

Alexie photo by Larry D. Moore – (CC) Larry D. Moore.

As a comment to the blog post, please write a paragraph or two in response to the topic you selected to cover when viewing the movie Doubt as follows:

• Describe your selected topic
• Explain aspects of your topic another viewer may have missed
• Explain how your observations help you understand the rhetorical purpose of the film

In addition to reading “The America I Love” by Elie Wiesel in The Conscious Reader (835-37), please read and be prepared to discuss the following 1988 essay by Peggy McIntosh on Wednesday, February 17:

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Elie Wiesel claims in “The America I Love” that racism “has vanished from the American scene” (836). McIntosh takes a different approach. How do you account for the difference in these perspectives?

Group Assignment:

• Compare the lyrics from U2’s song “All I Want is You” on the handout to the lyrics from one of the three songs in Etheridge’s essay “Music as a Safe Haven” (525-31).
• Of the two songs, which lyrics represent better poetry—which has a more effective argument, and how do you know?
• Post a paragraph or a list in response to the questions above as a comment to this blog post. Be sure to introduce the songs you selected by title and note the names of the people in your group.

Other Resource:

Sharon L. Williams Andrews provides the following “Song-Analysis Questions” for her Introduction to Poetry course at Louisiana State University. Before posting your group’s response, consider Andrew’s questions below to generate possible criteria for your evaluation:

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In class, we discussed ideas for defining criteria as required for Major Essay #2.  We examined real-world examples of criteria used in various evaluation processes:

• Five Criteria for Evaluating Webpages
• Scoring Criteria for Smarter Cities
• New Energy Congress—Technology Review Criteria

The criteria below could be quite useful when evaluating the rhetorical effectiveness of a literary or film text:

• Logos—the logical appeal.  When evaluating the logical appeal of a text, consider whether the work includes or avoids common logical fallacies. How well does the work withstand intellectual criticism?
• Ethos—the ethical appeal. How well does the speaker establish her own credibility with an audience?
• Pathos—the emotional appeal. How well does the work create a sense of emotional involvement in the reader or viewer?
• Sensory Appeal—consider how well a work appeals to an audience’s sensory perceptions by using sound, rhythm, or visual imagery to make a reader/viewer’s experience more tangible or memorable; consider descriptions of smell or texture as well.
• Structure—consider the structure or organization of a work as a criterion for evaluation (whether the sequence of events or the order of evidence presented is rhetorically effective).
• Audience—consider whether the ability of a work to reach a broad audience or a limited audience could be used as a criterion for evaluation (this criterion could be a subcategory of the ethical appeal).
• Other criteria can be useful depending on which aspects of a text you consider most important. On Monday, the class created a word cloud of additional words to consider as criteria for evaluating texts: