ENGL 1020 "Rhetorical Analysis" Paper -- Spring 2015

I taught two English 1020 classes for Laura Dubek last week. Her students are looking for argumentative essays for a rhetorical analysis project. In case you encounter them at the reference desk, they are looking for ONE argumentative essay that is substantial enough for them to analyze in some depth. They are doing a research poster for Scholars Week that examines how the article's author uses rhetorical strategies to make an argument.  

They do not need scholarly articles, news stories, or short opinion pieces. In class, I showed them two options to get started:

Option 1: Opposing Viewpoints. While most of the "viewpoints" in this database are too short for this assignment, I pointed out the Magazines results for each topic, and showed how you can limit your results by Document Types to get "Critical essays," "Viewpoint Essays," and "Articles." See the left column in the image below. They will still need to look through these and find one that is substantial enough to warrant analysis.

Option 2: Reader's Guide Full Text. Again, this isn't perfect because there are tons of short articles here too, but the advanced search does give you the option to limit to Editorial and Opinion pieces. Hold down the CTRL key as you click these options to apply both limits at once.

These are the two starting points I shared in class. If you have other methods that yield good results, please share them in the comments section below. -- Jason