Outcome two requires me to both read the sources and analyze them in order to integrate multiple kinds of evidence to generate and support my writing. Throughout high school, the writing I have been doing was to just summarize the reading. I have never thought about analyzing the readings rhetorically, that is, understanding writers’ situations, audiences, purposes and claims. I perform rhetorical analysis in order to better understand my sources, furthermore, to use the sources as evidences to fortify my arguments. My SA 2 can best show my achievement in this outcome since I needed to compare the different rhetorical choices made by different authors.

Analyzing different sources can provide a broader and more accurate understanding of the argument we are going to make. As a result, it is significant to cross-examine texts to gain a better understanding of how they make their arguments the most effective and persuasive. This is the reason why I chose two articles--“Raising the minimum wage is common sense” and “Minimum Wage Increase is Bad for Jobs”-- with different perspectives on the same issue to analyze for SA 2, and used this analysis in my MP 1.

Minimum wage has always been a heated topic. It is important for American society to solve this issue, while keeping both opponents and proponents of the wage hike happy. That is why I picked this topic to write. To analyze the reading rhetorically, I first need to understand the text to be able to summarize it. The introduction of SA2 shows my ability to demonstrate an understanding of the two articles by stating, “the authors of ‘Raising the minimum wage is common sense’clearly tell us that when the cost of living goes up, so should wages, while John Barrasso discusses in his article ‘Minimum Wage Increase is Bad for Jobs’ that job loss is the result of minimum wage increase.” (Fan 1)

In my SA 2, I contrast the articles based on specific rhetorical choices they made. I first show what the two articles share in common – their statistical information – and how they are different in tone. This kind of organization can give a stronger sense to the audience of how two articles are different than the other strategy, which summarizes all the rhetorical choices of one article first, then discusses the other’s. Having a stronger organization is only one of the elements of building a successful argument. Having evidence to back up the argument is also essential. It not only shows that I understand the source but also help clarify confusions the readers may have. In order to support the point that “while both authors rely heavily on statistical data to back up their claims, Barrasso uses infographics that help make his argument more effective,” I use quotes from Quinn et al.’s article when I write “groceries cost 20% more, a gallon of gas costs 25% more, and average tuition at a community college increased 44%” and a diagram from Barrasso’s article to support my argument (Fan 2).

Citing other people’s work is very important; it gives others credit for their hard work, distinguishes our own ideas from those of someone else, validates what we are writing, emphasizes the position we are holding, and prevents plagiarism. Although I didn’t need to do a work-cited page or in-text citations for SA2, I clearly stated the author of the sources that I used. To support the point that “Quinn et al. primarily use pathos to build their article,” I provided a quote from their writing. And I cited the quote by putting “Quinn et al. employ pathos when they write” before the quote (Fan 3). Another example is that to illustrate my point that “Quinn et al. provide a lot of statistics to fortify their claim,” I inserted the quote from their writing and pointed out that Quinn et al. are the authors of this quote (Fan 4).