Evaluation Argument Works Cited 10/1

Works Cited

Lemire, Christy. "The Fault in Our Stars Movie Review (2014)." All Content. Roger Ebert, 6 June 2014. Web. 30 Sept. 2014. <http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-fault-in-our-stars-2014>.

Stevens, Dana. "The Fault In Our Stars Didn’t Make Me Cry—Am I a Bad Person?" Slate Magazine. Slate, 6 June 2014. Web. 30 Sept. 2014. <http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2014/06/the_fault_in_our_stars_starring_shailene_woodley_reviewed.html>.

Morris, Wesley. "Die Another Day." Grantland. N.p., 6 June 2014. Web. 30 Sept. 2014. <http://grantland.com/features/tom-cruise-edge-of-tomorrow-review/>.

Evaluation Argument Introduction 10/1

The Fault in Our Stars came out in early June of 2014 and was based off of the bestselling young adult novel by John Green. The Fault in Our Stars is about a girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster who was diagnosed with cancer. She’s young, cynical, and broken, afraid of connecting with others for fear she’ll hurt them in the end too. She keeps this up until Augustus Waters is able to break through the barriers that she put up around herself. Augustus is now cancer free, but understands the pain and struggle that Hazel feels. The story revolves around their relationship as it starts as friendship and turns into something more. From first glance, this film has all of the criteria to be a typical cheesy teenage “sick flick”, but this film manages to be more than that. Through phenomenal acting, and a wonderful script this film is able to touch the hearts of its audience as it delves into the struggles of cancer, the brevity of life, and love. 

Proposal 9/25

For my essay I have chosen to write about the movie The Fault in Our Stars. This movie came out in early June of 2014 and was based off of a bestselling young adult book. The Fault in Our Stars is about a girl named Hazel with cancer. She’s young, cynical, and broken, afraid of connecting with others for fear she’ll hurt them in the end too. She keeps this up until Augustus Waters is able to break through the barriers that she put up around herself. Augustus is now cancer free, but understands the pain and struggle that Hazel feels. The story revolves around their relationship as it starts as friendship and turns into something more. But this is not meant to just be some cheesy teenage romance, it’s about the brevity of life, the struggles of cancer, and love.

This movie did very well this summer in the box office and just recently came out on DVD as well. This movie did have mixed reviews, much due to the intended audience. Some people were unable to look past the teenaged romance aspects, but those who did were able to get so much more out of the plot. Something noted in negative reviews was that the filming was awkward at times. This is something that I noticed myself when watching the movie, and it did affect my viewing of the movie to a degree, but other aspects such as the acting and script made up for the filming aspects. Some positive reviews state that while the script may lack in places or simply come out awkward in the movie (screenwriters attempted to keep the movie as true to the book as possible) while they didn’t in the book, but the phenomenal acting made up for it. 

9-24

The purpose of assignment 2 is to improve our argumentative writing, especially in the sense of making it more thoughtful and respectful towards differing views. This assignment will also give us practice with citing outside sources in order to use this in our argument. I feel that it is all quite clear and have no questions regarding the assignment. 

9/8 - Possible Ads

Ad 1

•  Appeals to male's sense of masculinity by challenging societal views because nursing is viewed as a female dominated career field. 
•  Uses a logical appeal by providing photos and information of male nurses because it provides a connection and reliability as a reader. 
•   Uses "masculine" hobbies that readers can connect to such as surfing and rock climbing because it showcases to readers that nurses can be masculine men too. 
•  Uses emotional appeal in the statement "Are you man enough to be a nurse" because it challenges a man's masculinity. 

Ad 2 

•  Uses emotional appeal by using an image of a tie as a noose because it creates a more realistic image and situation to the viewer, increasing the sense of urgency. 
• Appeals to audiences emotions because it showcases difference in views of a child and adult, allowing the audience a glimpse into the viewpoint of a child and how they see things differently. 
•  Appeal to logic through the use of statistics in the ad because this gives the viewer more background and sense of reliability. 
•  Creates a connection with the viewer through the use of something so common as a school tie because most people will have some connection to a student, increasing their concern for the subject of the ad. 

Ad 3 

•  Uses emotional appeal because it suggests activities women cannot do, prompting an presumably angry response from its target audience. 
•  Appeals to an audience's humanity through the image because the woman in the photo is positioned so that she stares straight at the reader, creating a connection with the reader. 
•  Uses logical appeal because it states that the information in the search engine was indeed taken from an actual Google search. 
•   Uses an emotional appeal because it draws upon women's personal experiences, providing realistic examples for the viewer to connect with. 

9/3 - Sample Rhetorical Analyses

The first essay titled What Would You do to Live has many lacking qualities. Even from just viewing the title, the reader begins to see some of these aspects. The title is not properly capitalized, which is just the first of other spelling and grammatical errors to follow. In only the second line of the essay "David Holcberg" is even spelled incorrectly. This severely diminishes the credibility of the author already, and the reader has only just begun to read the essay. Moving beyond the grammatical aspects, the author of this essay addresses most of the criteria, but does not really go into depth. For example, when giving background, the author barely skims the information, not giving the reader enough information to really understand. In contrast, the author of the second essay gives much better background. They actually give their reader some information, introducing Ayn Rand's philosophy and other relevant information.

Moving on to the second essay, I found this one to be much better, although it could also still use some improvement. The thesis in this essay was better than the previous, but still was not very clear. They allow examination from multiple angles by stating the values of the expected audience and diplomatically suggesting an audience that may not agree with the philosophies suggested. This author clearly addresses Holcberg's use of ethos pathos, and logos. This essay also uses evidence from Holcburg's essay well, even bringing in some outside evidence, while I found that the first essay almost uses too many quotations, not allowing for much individual thought within the essay. So, overall, I would give the second essay a better grade than the first, but both essays have areas in which they can improve.

Assignment 1 - 9/4

The purpose of this assignment is to put our knowledge of arguments into practice. Through this assignment our understanding of a well thought out argument and its components should be displayed. Some such characteristics include the use of ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos. This assignment should also familiarize students more with these terms, some of which may be completely new concepts. To do this assignment, the chosen ad must be understood from multiple angles in order to give a well thought out argument and show an understanding of the image and assignment.

I find Assignment 1 to be quite straight forward and do not feel that anything is needed to make it clearer. However, there is one thing I do find somewhat confusing at this time. This is the mention of federal disclaimers. It says that the federally mandated copy of ads should not be used in the analysis. Since I’m not completely sure I know what this is referring too, I am a bit confused as to what is meant. Once that is clarified that would probably answer any other questions that this prompted for me.