ENG 110: Rhetorical Analysis and Research

Welcome to the English 110 Course Research Guide!

The purpose of this guide is to provide information and resources for navigating the assignments in the ENG 120 course at the Pleasantville Campus: the Unit 2 Rhetorical Analysis and the Unit 3 Research Paper. Descriptions of the assignments are below. 

Use the navigation on the left side to find support for completing these assignments. 

In the Rhetorical Analysis assignment, students will go back to the literacy discussed in the first assignment and look at how writers speak into a specific topic related to that discipline. They will, therefore, learn to better understand the literacy and rhetorical practices they discussed in the previous assignment. For instance, if a student is interested in sports, they may discuss “taking a knee.” The goal is for students to see that all information is not equal – that it is a product of its maker and its audience. As a result, students are not determining which writer is right or wrong. Rather, they will explore how these writers use language to convey a point – and how approaches vary given the variables of publication, writer, and audience.

Research Goals: 

• Choose two essays addressing your topic
• Evaluate the relevance and assess the potential viability of deeper investigations in the dialogue between the works
• Identify the purpose, efficacy, and utilization of language as persuasive strategies in relation to audience

The Research assignment asks students to build from the first two assignments. Rather than talking about literacy and rhetoric, they will apply it. As such, students will move away from binary arguments and instead write a paper that considers the many stakeholders of a given dialogue. Therefore, this will not be a paper that argues for an end to polluting the oceans. Rather, such research would explore the complexity of the issue and how varying groups negotiate a cultural event or social concern through language.

Research Goals: 

• Locate relevant sources using basic online search tools and databases (example: news sources, online magazines, podcasts, TedTalks, blogs, and interviews);
• Evaluate credibility and recognize biases of sources;
• Engage in existing scholarship in developing new scholarship;