Reviews often use multiple rhetorical strategies

Each week on my blog at http://writingisconversation.blogspot.com I post one or two book reviews that I’ve written. Read at least three of them (scroll down, or click on Blog Archive on the left side of the screen to find the entries with titles that begin “Recently Read”).

Notice that I usually give some background (why I like the author or type of book. Is this book is part of a series? Is this an author I read often or a new one to me?), a brief summary of the plot and characters, and my opinion/advice on the value of reading the book.

After you’ve read my reviews, write your own review of something you’ve read, seen, heard or attended. You can review a book, a movie, an event (like a sports game or concert), a TV show, a CD, or anything that would suit the requirements of this assignment. To effectively write your review, you’ll be using at a minimum the rhetorical strategies of narrative and reflection. You may use more. Your review must be one to three paragraphs and contain:

• Background information (do you usually see this TV show? Did someone recommend the movie to you?)
• A summary of the plot or action. Remember what you’ve learned the past few weeks on how to summarize content.
• Your opinion (do you recommend it? Was it boring? Should someone else skip it or see it?)

More article summaries

The ability to write effective summaries is a key component of all types of rhetoric. A summary requires you to:
Synthesize and analyze information
Present that information in a succinct and logical form to the reader

For this week’s assignment, select an article from the news, local, feature or business sections (NOT sports or entertainment) from one of the following sources:

http://www.dunnconnect.com/
http://www.leadertelegram.com/
http://www.twincities.com/
http://www.madison.com/wsj/

Read it, then write a summary. Remember, a summary should include the key items in the article. A summary should also be brief and to the point. A reader should be able to clearly understand what the article was about, any conclusions by the article’s author, and where to go to read the full article. Write your summary and include which of the above sources you used, the title of the article, the date and the author.

Article summaries to help with writing the compare/contrast essay

To help with the pre-writing and writing phases, choose ONE of the following links, read the article there, then summarize in one paragraph and post your summary as comments for this week. Read each other’s summaries so you learn from them as well. You may select the same article link as someone else, but you will need to produce a significantly different summary.

“The Writing Process—time management and general writing guideline” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/writeproc.html
“Assessing the credibility of online sources” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/research/credibility1.html
“Comparison-contrast essays” read sections 1-4 at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/comparcontrast.html
“Strategies for writing a conclusion at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/conclude.html
“Developing an introduction—the Top Down Model” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/intro.html
“Thesis statement” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/thesistatement.html
“Transition cues” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/style/transitioncues.html
“Strategies for reducing wordiness” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/style/wordiness.html
“Using specific, concrete details” at
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/sensorydetails.html

The more effort up front, the better the result

No matter what you are writing—a report, an essay, or any other document—I can’t stress enough how important it is to spend time on the pre-writing phase. At Lucent Books, my editor said she had found that the more time she and the writer spend thrashing out the proposed book content before writing is begun, the faster the book goes. She and I spent hours on the phone, I did tons of research, and we had almost weekly exchanges of FedEx documents. We spent three months doing this, and I was thinking, “holy smokes, I’ll be ready to retire before this book gets written.” Once we had all our thoughts aligned and expectations synchronized, I started writing. It took me one month.

In your comments, explain exactly how you will tackle writing the compare/contrast essay. What are your pre-writing tasks? What will you do to write it? What will you do to make sure it will get an A? BE SPECIFIC!