Current Event/Rhetorical Précis Assignment AP English Language – Ferguson

An important part of your success on the AP test — and in your life beyond high school — will be a broad knowledge of what is going on in the world, the kinds of social and political debates being had, and the ways people involved in those arguments make their cases successfully, and unsuccessfully. One of the three essays you will write on the AP exam will require you to provide evidence for a given argument from your own prior knowledge and understanding of national, world, and historical events. This assignment is designed to help you prepare for that.

The assignment has two parts, both of which will be due each Monday at the beginning of class. In addition to the written assignment below, students will share their current events in their small groups, and at least one student from each group will present his/her rhetorical précis to the class each week. I will collect these each week, so be sure to have the thoroughly completed assignment with you each week.

**You must attach the article to your assignment sheet**

POINTS: 30

Directions
-- The two parts described below must be typed, double space, using an ordinary font such as Times New Roman in 10 or 12 point font.

-- Per MLA style, in the upper left hand corner of your page, please type: Your full name Suzy Smith My name Ferguson Course name and hour AP English Language, 3rd Hour Date September 9, 2013

-- Please title each week’s submission as “Current Event (Date)”

Part 1:
After following the local, state, national, and world news each week, decide what you think is the most important stories/events for that week, and for each story/event, complete the following prompts (examples are provided):

Topic: Hurricane Isaac
Who (does the news impact?): The people of Louisiana and Mississippi.
What (is happening/has happened/will happen?): Hurricane Isaac, potentially a Category 2 hurricane, will make landfall in the southern U.S.
When: August 27-29, 2012
Where: Gulf Coast region of the United States
Why: Late August/early September is hurricane season in the U.S.

You will do this for the news events you believe to be among the most important the previous week.

Part 2 — Rhetorical Précis

A précis (pray-see) is a brief summary that follows a specific format. In this case, you will be selecting one editorial/column/opinion piece each week and writing a précis with the following four sentences:

1) A single sentence which includes the author, title, date (in parentheses); a rhetorically accurate verb (such as "asserts," "argues," "refutes," "proves," "explains," etc.), followed by a clause that contains the major claim (thesis statement) of the work.
Example: In his article “Idiot Warning Labels” ( 2000), Leonard Pitts Jr. proclaims that warning labels are spreading stupidity among the public.

2) A single sentence explaining how the author develops and supports the argument. Feel free to quote from the piece here (see additional examples below). As the semester progresses, you will use more rhetorical terms here.

Example: Pitts combines verbal irony, logical appeal, and rhetorical questioning with a variety of cultural references to support his claim.

3) A single sentence describing the author’s purpose.

Example: Pitts vents his frustration in order to bring awareness to the fact that corporations intellectually demean consumers.

4) A single sentence describing the intended audience for the piece or describing the relationship the author establishes with the audience.

Example: His audience consists of typical American readers and consumers—people who may agree with the absurdity of such labels.

Putting it all together: In his article “Idiot Warning Labels” ( 2000), Leonard Pitts Jr. proclaims that warning labels are spreading stupidity among the public. Pitts combines verbal irony, logical appeal, and rhetorical questioning with a variety of cultural references to support his claim. Pitts vents his frustration in order to bring awareness to the fact that corporations intellectually demean consumers. His audience consists of typical American readers and consumers—people who may agree with the absurdity of such labels.

Additional Examples:

In her article "Who Cares if Johnny Can't Read?" (1997), Larissa MacFarquhar asserts that Americans are reading more than ever despite claims to the contrary and that it is time to reconsider why we value reading so much, especially certain kinds of "high culture" reading. MacFarquhar supports her claims about American reading habits with facts and statistics that compare past and present reading practices, and she challenges common assumptions by raising questions about reading's intrinsic value. Her purpose is to dispel certain myths about reading in order to raise new and more important questions about the value of reading and other media in our culture. She seems to have a young, hip, somewhat irreverent audience in mind because her tone is sarcastic, and she suggests that the ideas she opposes are old-fashioned positions.

In the article “End Homework Now” (2001), Etta Kralovec and John Buell claim that the practice of assigning homework is not an effective teaching method because its negative effects outweigh its benefits. Kralovec and Buell support their claims by providing examples of how homework disrupts families, overburdens children, and limits learning; and while dispelling myths about the benefits of homework, the authors provide alternative practices that would lead to improvement in student achievement. The authors’ purpose is to make the reader question a practice that is a trademark of the U.S. education system and decide whether it is conducive to creating a “smarter” student. They seem to be speaking to the entire educational community: administrators, teachers, students, and parents.

Sheridan Baker, in his essay "Attitudes" (1966), asserts that writers' attitudes toward their subjects, their audiences, and themselves determine to a large extent the quality of their prose. Baker supports this assertion by showing examples of how inappropriate attitudes can make writing unclear, pompous, or boring, concluding that a good writer "will be respectful toward his audience, considerate toward his readers, and somehow amiable toward human failings.” His purpose is to make his readers aware of the dangers of negative attitudes in order to help them become better writers. He establishes an informal relationship with his audience of college students who are interested in learning to write "with conviction.”