In the article, "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively" (published in the College English Journal, Volume 52, #1, January 1990, page74-91), Margaret Kantz’s argument states that any two writers can take one piece of factual information and present it in such different ways that it may not seem like the same topic. In fact she claims that non-fiction text is just one writers argument of the facts. A writer can take a topic and either argue for or against it yet it still being factual. This way the writer can convince or sway the audience to one opinion or another on basically the same piece of information.
One example that Kantz used was the statement, “the Earth is round". The status of this fact depends on agreement that "round” is an adequate description of the earth’s actual, imperfectly spherical shape (Writing About Writing Pg.67). Meaning what is factual to an audience or group depends on how specific one chooses to be about “facts”. When saying the earth is round most of us agree that this is true because the earlier option was the earth was flat. If we were to get precise about the exact shape of the earth perhaps we all wouldn’t agree that it is perfectly round. This proves that one can use a fact to prove that the earth is round rather than flat but one could also argue this “fact” of the earth being round as more imperfectly roundish. One person can use the same fact for different purposes.
Kantz also used a, “typical college sophomore,” as another example to prove her point. The student’s writings up to this point had been basically a rewriting of "facts" taken from a variety of texts on any given topic. The paper noted was on some battle waged long ago, over in Europe. In this example the student received a poor grade on the paper and Kantz suggests that that the poor grade was maybe not entirely the fault of the student. She suggests that possibly the student was never taught any other way to consider text and it’s supporting information. She goes one to suggest that possibly the student had never been exposed to such a thing as rhetorical reading. One could say that the student learned to read everything as true and not to question its validity. Therefore the student could regurgitate the facts into a paper without really questioning what she read. Regarding the student’s paper Kantz talks about the student’s failure to actually discuss original ideas about the text.
Unlike the example of the student who regurgitated information into a paper I hope to bring my own personal beliefs into this paper, which brings about my situation on this writing task. As a freshmen, at 46 years old, I feel my reading skills are fair but I’m still working on my writing skills. The last time I was in school was 1981 and this is probably my first true exposure to rhetorical reading. But actually, I am coming to realize that unknowingly I have been a rhetorical reader most of my life I just didn’t have the right language or words to describe it. I have often questioned what I was reading and whether it was “true” (fact) or whether it was just “true” for the author. So, if I were to become practiced in rhetorical reading, through guidance, trial and error, and reading at least, “some" text that interested me, I would like to think I and any other student could become successful.
Although, Kantz is arguing that perhaps rhetorical reading wasn’t taught to the “sophomore student” this article was published in 1990 which is roughly 20 years ago. I believe a lot has changed in the past 20 years specifically what was taught to students about rhetorical reading. Although, I have no “facts” to back up my previous statement I know everything changes, (the only constant is change) so I can only assume (and hope) that what was once taught has been improved upon. So perhaps in 2011 students have been taught the importance of rhetorical readings and teachers no longer see papers where students just regurgitates facts. Also, this being published in the National Council of Teachers of English the audience for this article was specifically for teachers. So in claiming that the student’s poor paper wasn’t the student’s fault but a lack of proper or good education by teachers could have made many teachers upset for Kantz pointing the finger at them. But this also could have been the starting point for change so I could also argue that this article helped change what is now being taught 20 years later.
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