TECHNICAL AND REPORT WRITING
ENGL 3053
Essay Assignment 1: Rhetorical Analysis

This assignment requires you to locate two to three pieces of professional writing in your field and analyze the rhetorical choices made by the writers. Your analysis will focus on the writers’ style, purposes, and conceptions of their audiences. Based on this analysis, you will compose an argument about the core rhetorical strategies employed in each document, and what those strategies tell you about writing in your field or discipline.

Researching and Analyzing
Find two or three pieces of professional writing in your field or discipline. Read and annotate the pieces carefully to digest the content, and make some initial observations about the rhetorical choices each author makes. Consider specifically how the writers express their purposes, how they conceive their audiences, and how they address those audiences in order to achieve their purposes:
• What is the rhetorical situation for each text? What is each writer trying to accomplish, and in what setting or context?
• What are the genres for each text, and what seem to be their respective conventions?
• How subtly or obviously are claims stated in each? How accurately are they stated?
• How does each writer establish authority? What kind of research does each writer cite?

Organization and drafting
Consider what you found by asking yourself the following:
• What are the fundamental characteristics of rhetoric in these writings? What do those characteristics reveal about the rhetorical organization of your field?
• What does this analysis suggest about the core rhetorical strategies of your major or discipline?
• Do your findings suggest any change in your own writing practices?

Now draft an essay explaining how your sources’ rhetorical choices might inform your own development as a writer in your field or profession.
• For what purposes are you most likely to write?
• What are the most important elements of your audience to consider?
• How will you establish your credibility or authority with these audiences?
• What stylistic strategies are most often employed?
Review chapters 4 and 6 in PSTC, and “Purpose,” “Audience,” and “Context” in HTW to help you elaborate on these rhetorical issues.

Revision and Documentation
Once you’ve drafted your essay, revise carefully for content, and then for clarity, mechanics and style. Use your discipline’s documentation style (e.g., MLA; APA; Chicago) consistently to attribute information and expression of ideas to your sources. Include as the last page of your essay a “Works Cited,” “References,” or “Bibliography page, according to the conventions of the style.

Minimum page length: 4-5 pages