Ruff Rhetor on Kantz

In the article, "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively", Margret Kantz claims the nonfiction text is just one writers argument of the facts. She claims that any two writers can take 1 piece of factual information and present it in such different ways that it may not seem like the same topic. In doing so, 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 a adequate description of the earths actual,imperfectly spherical shape.(Writing About Writing Pg.67)

Kantz used a ,"typical college sophmore,"as an example in her article. This students writings 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.

Kantz's example student recieved a poor grade on the paper. Kantz suggests that that the poor grade was maybe not entirely the fault of the students. Kantz suggests that possibly the student was never taught any other way to consider text, and its supporting information. Kantz suggests that possibly the student had never been exposed to such a thing as rhetorical reading. Kantz talks about the failure to disscuss original ideas on the text.

This brings about my situation on this writing task. I feel my reading skills are fair, and that I am getting a sense of the importance of rhetorical reading. Actually, I am coming to realize that unknowing I have been a rhetorical reader most of my life.

But, taking one of the limited topics and reading it rhetorically still seems to be out of my grasp. Sure, I get some information out of such dry articles, but its like taking a pair of pliers and extracting my own teeth. Painstaking!!!!

If a student were to become practiced in rhetorical reading, through guidance, trial and error, and reading at least,"some" text that interested them, I would like to think they could become successful. And hopefully somewhere at the end of it all would be a product worth the time to read it.