Time: Tuesday May 18,2021 From 9am to 10:30am California Time
You will have 90 minutes to read the following article, analyze it, and write an essay. You may use your books, notes, dictionary, spell-checker, and thesaurus.
Suggested format
1. Introduction: Identify the author, his/her purpose for writing, conclusion, and target audience. State your thesis evaluating the overall strength or weakness of the author’s arguments and a brief reason why, not your personal feelings about the issue.
2. Body: Identify author’s support points—the premises and evidence used to support the conclusion—using brief quoted examples as references.
a. Set out the strengths—
i. What points best support the thesis?
ii. What kinds of reasoning does the author use (statistics, analogies, cause/effect reasoning)? Other persuasive devices?
b. Set out the weaknesses—
i. Are there fallacies (label them), contradictions, omissions, unsupported claims, unwarranted assumptions, non-credible references, biased language?
3. Conclusion: Assess and respond to the persuasiveness of the writing. Give specific examples for your statements. Remember, you can acknowledge that an argument is strong even though you may not agree with it, or acknowledge that an argument is weak even though you do agree with it. When you answer 3b and c below, remember to tie your remarks to your assessment of the author’s argument. This is not an essay about your own opinion on the essay topic.
a. Do the strengths outweigh the weaknesses?
b. How does the author’s argument conclusion compare with your own about the issue?
c. Did this article change your views on the issue in any way
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