“Is It Time to Kill the Liberal Arts Degree Critique – Get Paper Help

EH102

Essay 2: Critique

Due Dates:

Drafts for Peer Review – Thursday, 2/18, 11:59 pm (Google Docs)

Submission Date – Tuesday 2/23, 11:59 p.m. (Canvas)

Length: 3-4 pages (approximately 800-1,250 words)

Value: 75 points

“Is It Time to Kill the Liberal Arts Degree?”

“A Liberal Arts Education Is Still Relevant”

“College Debt: Necessary Evil or Ponzi Scheme?”

“Forgive Student Loans?”

Assignment:  Choose one of the essays from Chapter 14 listed above and write a critique that analyzes and evaluates the essay’s argument.  Your essay should examine all of the elements identified by the Toulmin Method (Claim, Reasons, Data, Warrant, Backing, Qualifiers, Rebuttal) and all of the key elements of the rhetorical situation.  These include the Writer (ethos), Medium (time and place), Audience (pathos), Constraints, Exigencies, and Opposing Views.  (You clearly won’t cover all of them in your critique, but you should first identify and evaluate their importance.)

Your thesis should indicate your overall evaluation of the essay.  Your evaluation should be based on the validity of the argument and its relevance to its intended audience.  You are not arguing for or against the issue that the essay discusses.  You also may want to offer a thesis with tension.  That is, since no argument is perfect, your thesis can acknowledge certain flaws while also asserting that the essay is generally effective, or vice versa.  For instance, your thesis may state, “Although Essay X needs to offer more relevant evidence, its claim and reasons are sound,” or, “While its claim and reasons are sound, Essay X needs to offer more relevant, credible evidence.”

The body of your essay can be organized in various ways, depending on your analysis of the argument and your assessment of the significance of each element.  At some point your essay should include a brief summary of the essay’s argument.

Audience: Your audience for this essay is the students in this class.  In other words, they generally are people near to you in age and in college experience.  You can assume that they have some familiarity with the text you are critiquing.  However, it is up to you to provide them with the details necessary for them to be able to understand what the key elements of the text’s argument are and to understand the effectiveness of each element as well as the effectiveness of the text as a whole.

Process:

Employ the Three Strategies for Critical Reading in order to examine the text carefully.  Practice the Four Criteria for Responsible Reasoning as you examine the text and develop your critique.  Pay attention not only to the elements of the argument but also to the relationships between those parts. Examine the evidence carefully.  It should be (1) Good – sufficient, accurate, and credible, and (2) Relevant – address the issue directly.  Of the Warrant, ask, (1) Is it relevant to the thesis? and (2) Are the beliefs and values it suggests good ones?  The Best Practices box on page 62 of Chapter 4 gives you further concepts and questions to consider, and Chapter 4 as a whole offers several strategies for developing and revising your draft.

Assessment: Your essay will be evaluated based on the Shared Criteria for Evaluating Writing, which can be found in Section 5 of The Little Penguin Handbook with Resources for Composition at the University of South Alabama.