Peer Critique

1. Peer Critique

2. What you’ll do • Introduce the draft • Summarize its main points • Assess and respond to the author’s presentation • Offer conclusions about the effectiveness of the analysis

3. How to do it • Read the guidelines from Ch. 4b in the St Martin’s handbook • Your crit should be 400-500 words • Separate your analysis into paragraphs. Do not just write one big paragraph of text. • You will critique students from across TTU’s FYC program • Look to the essay’s works cited list to determine what text your peer wrote about. Read that text.

4. Text for analysis/thesis • Identify the writer's thesis and then evaluate it for effectiveness. • Determine whether the writer has selected a particular text to analyze and whether or not the thesis indicates that the writer will complete a rhetorical analysis of the text. • Discuss whether the thesis is specific enough and of appropriate scope for this analysis. • For example, a thesis that states that an author uses ethos, pathos, and logos in their text is NOT specific enough for a rhetorical analysis. Explain why or why not, and provide suggestions for the writer to help improve the thesis, if necessary.

5. Quality and Specificity of Analysis • Evaluate the writer’s analysis. • Does the writer select specific quotations from the text to discuss? What are these quotations, and what does the writer have to say about them? • Does the writer seem to effectively analyze, or does the draft read more as a summary or paraphrasing of parts of the text being analyzed, or does the writer end up arguing about the content, rather than the structure and presentation of the text?

6. Overall Essay Structure • Comment on the overall structure of the essay. • For example, explain in detail whether or not the paragraphs are presented in a logical and persuasive way. Does the writer provide a clear introduction, body and conclusion? Does each paragraph begin with a clear topic sentence and transition into the next paragraph? • Provide examples that are particularly effective or areas that need more improvement.

7. Rosen in “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism” gives an insightful look into social networking, through different devices varying from ethos, pathos and logos. Rosen used these devices to explain the main concepts such as status-seeking, the new taxonomy of friendship, making connections and others, and how social networking has had an impact in the lives of people variously.

8. Michael Pollan’s article, “Wendell Berry’s Wisdom,” was published on September 2, 2009 in response to the then-growing organic food trend that took hold when Michelle Obama created an organic garden on the White House grounds. Pollan appears to have taken notice of this new movement that was becoming popular in America; even the New York Times appeared to have noticed and when covering the emergence of the trend, its cover story article asked “Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?” Instead of celebrating about the trend’s emergence in his article, Pollan takes a different view of this new “food revolution,” arguing such a discussion of organic food instead started in the 1970s, well before 2009 (Pollan). Pollan mainly uses ethos along with other rhetorical devices to help support the main argument throughout his article.

9. The digital age has helped spawn a whole cultural movement as well as a world-wide phenomenon that has become a touchy subject for debate and controversy; social networks the tool in which helps users communicate via online. With the advent of social networks such as Friendster, MySpace, and the behemoth of them all, Facebook. Each social network has made a huge ding in the way society goes about with communication in the world today. In the article "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism", written by Christen Rosen, she claims that social networks have stifled personal interactions by causing an unhealthy interaction between two or more people, having one-on-one interaction a depersonalized activity and has evolved into a distanced interaction. Rosen backs her claims using a variety of creditable sources from researches and users of social networks, powerful analogy, and irony to help the reader into an enlightenment and realization of the drawbacks to online interaction and the harm it is potentially of causing in the process.

10. Healthy eating and ecological farming are becoming favored issues in the United States. There are a number of articles that cover these topics. As an excellent author, journalist, and Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Michael Pollan discusses food and farming in his article “Wendell Berry’s Wisdom”, which was published in “The Nation”. Pollan argues that food and farming are the national conversation within the United States. Also, Pollan promotes this national information by making ethical, emotional, and logical appeals to his readers.

11. The success of online social networks has captured the eye of Christine Rosen and many folks in the past decade. With the invention of MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites, Christine Rosen argues that the online community has expanded immensely creating new social norms that have impacted behavior of many individuals. In the didactic article “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism,” Christine Rosen utilizes concrete logical literature, well researched excerpts, and perpetual persuasion to support her theories with established credibility and drift readers towards her idea that the new evolutionary practice of virtual communication through social networking sites is a rapidly developing system that has become widely accepted all over the world.

12. One more note… • If one of the following describes you, you need to see me immediately after class: • You’ve never logged into Raiderwriter • You’ve never turned in any assignments • You haven’t turned in an assignment since BA3