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Wednesday, January 29

Hi, Everyone—

Here is your HW for Monday:

(1) Read the link to “50 Rhetorical Devices,” available under the Pages link and also here. If you’re inclined, use some of that knowledge in what you write for (3) below.

(2) Read the first two paragraphs of at least 6 pieces of writing. These writings can come from Canvas (i.e., under the Unit 2 folder, or the Pages link), or from tetw.org, or from other sources that you find for yourself.

(3) Pick 2 of these pieces of writing—2 that you might want to cover—to fully read. For each of those 2, after reading them, do the following:

a. In about 250 words, propose how you’d want to cover it. Take the example below as a guide for what I’m looking for in how you propose:

“I read “I Want a Wife” by longtime wife Judy Brady, a sarcastic article written for the first issue of Ms, a feminist magazine, in 1970, about her frustrations at all the things that wives do for husbands. I liked not only its syntax—its use of anthypophora and anaphora to rant—but also how it expresses frustrations about wifedom that many women would agree with, but that wouldn’t have been understood by others at that time. In my essay, I’d like to do the same, but about a different experience: getting a college degree. In my cover, I’d use my own rhetorical stance toward that issue—I’m a college student, and I have specific experience with that similar to how she wrote as an expert on being a wife—to rant about the expenses of getting a degree that will laden me with debt for the next 25 years. This would be similar to Brady’s rhetorical stance in that, like her, I’d write for people who already agreed with the opinion (she wrote for women who were wives, and I’d be writing for kids who are in college), but also, I’d provide an opinion that not many others had thought about that way (in my case, the Boomer generation, who still thinks that if you just work hard, everything will be okay).

As in the above example, make sure to describe what you find interesting about the rhetorical similarities between the original and your proposed cover, and note specific rhetorical devices they use that you find interesting that you might want to emulate.

b. Be ready to talk about this stuff in conference with me on Monday.