When we research, we have to be aware that all the sources we are using are rhetorical, which means that the sources have specific purposes, audiences, and contexts that impact the information they provide and the ways in which they distribute and present this information. To be a skilled and competent researcher in this class and in future academic and professional contexts, you will need to be able to consider the rhetorical aspects of your sources. In other words, you will need to be able to research rhetorically.

Researching Rhetorically 1 (the first assignment within your Unit 1 Project) will get you started on what it means to research rhetorically. Specifically, for this first assignment of the project, you will read, compare, and analyze two different texts that participate in the same research conversation. Theaudience for this assignment is your instructor, and your purpose for completing the assignment is to explain what you learned by comparing two very different texts. The genre you are writing in is what writing scholars call a “school genre.” 

Step 1: 

To start, you will find two sources on your approved topic. The two sources should be different from each other in terms of at least one of the following: audience, purpose, genre. For example, you can find a persuasive source and an informative source (that would be two different purposes); or you can find a source that’s written for scientists and one that’s written for a general audience; you can find one that’s a newspaper article and one that’s a scholarly journal (that would be two different genres). Once you’ve found two sources that share at least one major difference in audience, purpose, and genre, and which are both discussing your topic, you’ll read both of them and complete the summary and analysis described in Steps 2 and 3 below. Both texts should be written texts (do not use a video.) 

Step 2:  

• Summarize each of your sources.
• Then, discuss how their arguments compare: What do they agree on? How did they build on each other? What did you learn from one source that you didn’t learn from the other source? Which do you think was most useful to helping you understand the topic and why? Was that related to the information included, or the way that information was “packaged”? 

Step 3:

Analyze the rhetorical choices made by each text, paying particular attention to how the sources are different from each other. You’ll want to consider how they are different (in terms of audience, purpose, and genre), what stylistic choices they make, and how their differences shape how these texts can participate in the conversation.