The two articles you read ("California Schools Should Remain Closed until Science Says It’s Safe to Reopen"

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and "It’s Past Time for Schools to Reopen")

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both address an issue that directly affects you, reopening our schools. The two articles take different approaches and try to convince you, as the reader, to support/believe the claims being made. The key here is to be a critical reader as you consider these arguments. For this assignment, you will develop a rhetorical analysis of texts (just like you did for Essay 1). However, you will focus not only on one but on both of these texts. Your purpose is to analyze the effectiveness of each argument to show which text has a stronger argument. Write an essay in which you evaluate AND compare the authors’ arguments. As always, this does not mean that you will agree or disagree with the arguments. (You should not be focusing on the issue re-opening schools; you should be focusing on the way they present their arguments and the rhetorical strategies they use or logical fallacies they commit). You should not comment on the actual arguments but rather focus on how well/effectively those arguments are written or developed.

You will want to explain each rhetorical choice for each of your sources, give descriptions or examples, and explain why the author(s) made that particular choice. Your thesis for this paper should focus on which is more effective in convincing the audience if its claims.

In order to analyze the argument, you will consider and compare/contrast both authors' use of:

• Pathos
• Ethos
• Logos
• Assumptions
• Logical fallacies
• Tone
• Types/Strength of evidence
• Objectivity/Bias

• Introduction
  • The introduction should give readers background into the issue of rhetoric, introduce both texts concisely, and end with a thesis that makes a claim about which argument is overall stronger or more effective.
    • Sample thesis: Overall, Rachel Baird developed a more effective argument in her article due to her superior use of ethos, logos and organizational type.
• A minimum of 2-3 body paragraphs
  • Each body paragraph should focus on one strategy to compare. It should provide at least one example from each of the texts and then analyze (show why/how the one text was stronger)
• Conclusion
• MLA formatting and a Works Cited page, which lists both articles