Project 2 Outline

In this blog post I will outlining my rhetorical analysis. The outline will cover topics such as the introduction, thesis body paragraphs, analytical claims and conclusion. I will also include a paragraph explaining how pages 122-5 of Writing Public Lives informed the choices I made in my outline.

Pages 122-5 of  Writing Public Lives gave interesting advice on topics for the following outline. With the introduction specifically, the reading helped me understand that I need to focus less on the actual issue, and more on the actual text. For thesis and analytical claims, I learned to take any analytical claims I have about the text and place them into the theses. In the body paragraphs, I will then elaborate on these claims and give evidence to back them up. Finally, the conclusions will wrap up my opinions on the text as a whole.

Outline

• Intro
• introduce background information on computer science education in the past and present
• introduce the goal/main point of the speech
• introduce the primary rhetorical strategies used by Partovi (the speaker)
• briefly touch on the cultural context surrounding the speech
• Thesis
• "In his TEDx talk, Hadi Partovi employs extensive use of logical appeal, along with appeals to his own credibility to convince his educated adult audience of the importance of piquing an interest in computer science in all students."
• Body Paragraphs
• Discuss use of logical appeal and its effectiveness
• Discuss use of emotional appeal and its effectiveness
• Discuss use of appeals to credibility
• Discuss how well all of these appeals worked together to prove main point
• Analytical Claims
• Slight disconnect between personal tragedy and rest of speech
• Very effective example with Ahman and Rahel
• Effective use of statistics/graphs, especially "half as many women in cs now"
• growth of Demand for cs grads is 3 times growth of cs students
• Gives immense credibility by mentioning the hour of code was introduced by Obama and on front page of google, everyone knows those things and will be impressed by that
• Use of the "seed" metaphor is a great visual for explaining the effectiveness of the hour of code
• Partovi understands his immediate audience is mostly adults/parents. uses many great references to kids, targeting the emotional appeal in parents
• Conclusion
• Recap the primary rhetorical strategies used and how effective each was
• Leave with a closing statement about how rhetoric within computer science works

EDIT:

After reading Alex's and Swati's outlines, I learned a few things. The main thing I learned was how extensive an outline can be. Swati's outline was especially thorough and well done. I plan on improving my outline after seeing effectively done her's is. After reading Alex's outline, I learned that there are other styles of outlines aside from the conventional use of bullets. Alex wrote more of his thoughts and plans out for each part of the analysis and plans on filling in the details later.