PURPOSE: S. A. R. Assignment

1. OVERVIEW: Summary, Analysis, and Response Assignment
2. PURPOSE: Summary, Analysis, and Response Assignment
• Step 1: Summarize the Source [Purpose, Audience, and Context]
• Step 2: Analyze the Source
• Step 3: Respond to the Source

What the Instructor is Looking for YOU TO LEARN in the Assignment

Summary, Analysis, and Response Assignment

Thinking About What the Instructor is Looking for in the Assignment

A professor often assigns such writing at the beginning of a course so that a student becomes fully aware of how student submissions will be reviewed by the professor, and it gives students practice being analytical when reading an argument.

Much of our personal reading and viewing of subject matter is passive. 

• This means that we let the article, advertisement, or video do the thinking for us—the audience. 

However, this is a very detrimental approach to the world. 

• If you do not take the time to think through what is being presented, how it is being presented, and what the author’s goals are in the presentation, you can easily be misled by fallacious content and illogical reasoning. 

Being able to analyze a reading, situation, advertisement, or video is a very important skill to have in a class where argument papers are assigned—as well as in everyday life. 

• If a student is unable to realize the key components for a well-written persuasive argument, the manipulative tactics used to persuade, and the appeals a writer will implement to argue his case, then that student will not be able to construct a strong argument of his own.

[In the next few sections, I will walk you through Virginia Kearney's article about

1.    summarizing,

2.    analyzing, and

3.    responding to a source

Our Discussion Board 1 assignment will require you to write persuasively about your reflections on the assigned video.  

I WILL BE LOOKING TO SEE IF YOU WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY (in the video) SOME KEY CONCEPTS ASSOCIATED WITH ARGUMENTS (that you would have learned from your classroom readings this week).  

The concepts below were mentioned in your readings this week: Course Content, Week 1 Questions, and the Collaboration folder in the Discussion Board for DB1.  The links below will take you to outside sources for more details.  You do not need to visit these links if you understood these concepts in your readings this week.

1. Purpose (the argument being made in the video)
2. Audience (who the video is trying to convince)
3. Context (the situation that calls for the argument)
4. Persuasive Techniques:
• Ethos
• Logos
• Pathos
5. Supported Arguments
• Statistics
• Expert Statements
• Logical Transitions
6. Defects in the Argument
1. Fallacies
2. Illogical Reasoning

You will summarize, analyze, and respond to the argument being made in the assigned video as you assert the strength and the persuasiveness of the video’s argument.

Content in blue boxes are the words of J. Dick.

Furthermore, elaboration/corrective content within Kearney’s writing can be found in [brackets].  These brackets are not Kearney’s ideas.  The bracketed content is infused by J. Dick for the edification of ENGL101 students.

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