Fields the grounder and underhands the ball the second baseman
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
AP® English Language Reading and Writing Analytically
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9. About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
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Oh, but when the engine gets out of tune, when the acting is uneven and the play drags, when the shortstop’s toss is too wide or the runner takes the legs out from under the second baseman or the first baseman can’t dig the throw out of the dirt, then we notice. What went wrong? Who supposedly tuned up that engine? What must the director have been thinking? Hasn’t the manager taught the fundamentals of turning a double play to these guys?
To cure all these ills, we analyze. What parts of the engine need our attention so we can get it back in tune? What parts of what scenes need more direction, more rehearsal? What actions need to be executed in what different ways by which players to pull off the double play?
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Introduction: Analysis as “Undoing”
David A. Jolliffe
So let rhetoric be defined as the faculty of discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion. (Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1355b)
SPEcIAL FOcuS: Reading and Writing Analytically
•� First,�reading�and�writing�analytically�are�not�rocket�science.�To�read�and�write analytically means to examine any text, “literary” or “ordinary,” in order to determine both what its meanings, purposes, and effects are and to show how its parts work together to achieve those meanings, purposes, and effects.
They refer to specific features of the concert or video—Michael Jackson’s snappy dance moves, for example, or Mariah Carey’s sappy lyrics—as support for their “cool” or “sucked” claims. And if 12-year-olds are routinely involved with rhetorical criticism of concerts and videos, how much more so
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And, finally, because teachers note that there’s a paucity of effective strategies that they can use, many of them don’t actually know how to teach analytic reading and writing.
Ideally, the chapters in this volume will speak to all four of these probable causes for students’ difficulties with reading and writing analytically. The other chapters take up vital conceptual questions related to reading and writing analytically as well as set out valuable strategies for teaching analytic reading and writing to high school and beginning college students. This introductory chapter is designed to accomplish three goals: to unpack a basic definition of rhetorical analysis, to demonstrate how this notion of rhetorical analysis underlies not only the analytic free-response (i.e., essay) questions but also the multiple-choice reading questions on the AP English Language and Composition Examination, and to describe how students’ abilities to read and write analytically, as evidenced by their performance on the AP English Language
In a very clear chapter that warrants the attention of all AP English Language and Composition teachers as well as college writing instructors, Jack Selzer notes, “There is no generally accepted definition of rhetorical analysis (or rhetorical criticism, as it is also called), probably because there is no generally accepted definition of rhetoric” (279). After discussing the range of definitions of rhetoric, some honorific and some pejorative, that have circulated since antiquity, Selzer settles on this characterization of the “interpretive enterprise” of the art of rhetoric: “…[R]hetorical analysis or rhetorical criticism can be understood as an effort to understand how people within specific social situations attempt to influence others through language” (280-1). Referring to “rhetorical analysis as a kind of critical reading,” Selzer explains further:
When people read rhetorically…when they engage in rhetorical analysis, they not only react to the message, but they appreciate how the producer of that message is conveying the message to a particular audience too, whether that intended audience includes the analyst or not (281).
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On Reading and Writing Analytically: Theory, Method, Crisis, Action Plan
SPEcIAL FOcuS: Reading and Writing Analytically
must, initially or ultimately, be able to show, in any text, how the writer or speaker capitalizes on unspoken assumptions he or she thinks the audience already believes about the issue at hand; incorporates facts, data, reasoning, and perspectives about the issue; and then substantiates a claim, a generalization, or a point about the issue.
Then we turn our attention to the most visible details in the text—its diction, its syntax, its imagery, and its figurative language (or, in rhetorical terms, its use of schemes and tropes). We take a careful, systematic look at each of these four elements:
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SPEcIAL FOcuS: Reading and Writing Analytically
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On Reading and Writing Analytically: Theory, Method, Crisis, Action Plan
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SPEcIAL FOcuS: Reading and Writing Analytically
On Reading and Writing Analytically: Theory, Method, Crisis, Action Plan
How Has Student Performance on Analysis Questions Changed?
•� For�the�2006�question�about�Hazlitt’s�“On�the�Want�of�Money,”�the�mean� score was 3.96 (standard deviation 1.68).
•� For�the�2007�question�based�on�Sanders’�“On�Staying�Put,”�the�mean�score� was 4.09 (standard deviation 1.89).
2. For a justification for and advice about teaching such passages, see Hephzibah Roskelly’s chapter in this volume.
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•� The�low-scoring�essay�on�the�2007�examination�is,�in�the�words�of�Mary�Trachsel of the University of Iowa, who led the Reading of the question, “disjointed.” It identifies discrete features without ever clearly explaining how the features connect to, and support, Sanders’ purpose and evolving ideas. The essay begins with a gloss on the content and relies heavily on glossing throughout.… The student seems to know what analysis is but inadequately performs the task, falling back on the strategies of paraphrasing content and pointing out stylistic features, yet not connecting the two.”
Three common threads run through these descriptions of the unsuccessful essays.
