Yuki x Adnan
SEMI-FORMAL REWRITE OF ORIGINAL ESSAY
To improve self-efficacy in any aspect of your life is a straightforward task. Spend time on it and refine it, till it becomes a part of you. We live in a global age where we are exposed to a large influx of ideas, people, and the most critical effect on our individual prosperities, is the monstrous competition we face. Being able to persuade the majority of the population is an integral skill, especially to fend off competition. Attaining the skill of persuasion takes practice and application. To be a skilfull persuader takes the mastery of the three fundamental techniques, ethos, pathos and logos. I will show you how Mike Morita used these principles effectively and poorly, and this knowledge will arm you, with the bullets of persuasion.
We begin loading our barrel with ethos, the foundational base that acts as a hook to provide the genial aspects of the writing. Proving to your audience first that you or whoever, is credible, and providing an ethical appeal. Morita appealed to us by providing evidence of how ethically bad our character Dick is and juxtaposing him to the other characters. “Perry” the murderer “could have asked for something. Though a bulky physique, his gentle personality and dog-like guided mind were revealed throughout the book. Perry constantly “wanted to fix Dick for being such a coward”(Capote247). After hearing of Perry’s childhood one may not feel the same apathy towards him as being a murderer. That is because Morita has successfully provided an ethical appeal to his audience that Perry was an acceptable human being. This further strengthened with the presence of Dick, and the immediate comparison the audience makes. Morita shows his ethical values to the audience by putting forward his thoughts about how we should empathize with Perry. This directs your resentful emotions towards Dick and your milder ones to Perry, which brings you to the next step in persuading your audience. The ally that is, emotional appeal.
Humans beings rely on emotions to make decisions. No matter how grounded an individual is, they act from pathos. Emotional appeal will keep our audience engaged. Morita further solidifies this by showing the “melancholy existence that” Perry “had, when his mother had died from her own vomit leading to multiple suicides of his siblings. There was nobody to illuminate him through the fog of despair, no one to teach him from right to wrong”(Morita). This elicits a strengthened emotion towards Perry, making you feel empathetic towards his criminal actions. Morita could have strengthened pathos with more impacting diction that could further ignite emotional connections with the audience. It is important to take advantage when your general audience is entranced by emotions to leave a permanent imprint on their thoughts regarding the issue concerning your argument. Persuasion is after all, a type of psychological warfare.
Without logical evidence you cannot conclude this fight towards persuasion. We need to satisfy a human being’s innate logical appeal. Morita had logical facts present in his writing, with quotes that helped him persuade and connect with his audience ethically and emotionally. However, his writing did not flow properly due to the lack of attention to detail and vague examples. The causal explanation of one of the protagonists, Dick, from Morita’s point of view was that “Dick was, what could you say? A dick! A childhood decent enough to live an exceptional future, Dick stays as a kid his whole life”(Morita). In my opinion logos is not incorporated in the entire piece as a whole and requires a final professional touch to it, casual language must be thrown, as this needs to be factual. All appeals you make must line up with professional language, proper structure and a clear and logical flow of thoughts in order to satisfy the “logos” of your argument.
Our writer makes a good entry into his argument but loses his audience because of the absence of logos. It was not well structured writing that connected well, for his personal logical reasoning was not there. Everything has a reason, and that reason must be explained, going into a battle, without your operation plan (logos) in trying to persuade people is impossible. There are seven billion people present on this earth and the significance of your thoughts must be established. You must establish ethical, emotional and logical appeal to change someone's thoughts the way you want them to believe. With the knowledge of ethos, pathos and logos you can predetermine in your mind, before releasing your cavalry into the world, that you are right. However, remember. These persuasive functions serve like a three legged stool, the absence of any one will collapse the whole purpose. With all of the legs present, you have the ability to carry the weight of the world.
We begin loading our barrel with ethos, the foundational base that acts as a hook to provide the genial aspects of the writing. Proving to your audience first that you or whoever, is credible, and providing an ethical appeal. Morita appealed to us by providing evidence of how ethically bad our character Dick is and juxtaposing him to the other characters. “Perry” the murderer “could have asked for something. Though a bulky physique, his gentle personality and dog-like guided mind were revealed throughout the book. Perry constantly “wanted to fix Dick for being such a coward”(Capote247). After hearing of Perry’s childhood one may not feel the same apathy towards him as being a murderer. That is because Morita has successfully provided an ethical appeal to his audience that Perry was an acceptable human being. This further strengthened with the presence of Dick, and the immediate comparison the audience makes. Morita shows his ethical values to the audience by putting forward his thoughts about how we should empathize with Perry. This directs your resentful emotions towards Dick and your milder ones to Perry, which brings you to the next step in persuading your audience. The ally that is, emotional appeal.
Humans beings rely on emotions to make decisions. No matter how grounded an individual is, they act from pathos. Emotional appeal will keep our audience engaged. Morita further solidifies this by showing the “melancholy existence that” Perry “had, when his mother had died from her own vomit leading to multiple suicides of his siblings. There was nobody to illuminate him through the fog of despair, no one to teach him from right to wrong”(Morita). This elicits a strengthened emotion towards Perry, making you feel empathetic towards his criminal actions. Morita could have strengthened pathos with more impacting diction that could further ignite emotional connections with the audience. It is important to take advantage when your general audience is entranced by emotions to leave a permanent imprint on their thoughts regarding the issue concerning your argument. Persuasion is after all, a type of psychological warfare.
Without logical evidence you cannot conclude this fight towards persuasion. We need to satisfy a human being’s innate logical appeal. Morita had logical facts present in his writing, with quotes that helped him persuade and connect with his audience ethically and emotionally. However, his writing did not flow properly due to the lack of attention to detail and vague examples. The causal explanation of one of the protagonists, Dick, from Morita’s point of view was that “Dick was, what could you say? A dick! A childhood decent enough to live an exceptional future, Dick stays as a kid his whole life”(Morita). In my opinion logos is not incorporated in the entire piece as a whole and requires a final professional touch to it, casual language must be thrown, as this needs to be factual. All appeals you make must line up with professional language, proper structure and a clear and logical flow of thoughts in order to satisfy the “logos” of your argument.
Our writer makes a good entry into his argument but loses his audience because of the absence of logos. It was not well structured writing that connected well, for his personal logical reasoning was not there. Everything has a reason, and that reason must be explained, going into a battle, without your operation plan (logos) in trying to persuade people is impossible. There are seven billion people present on this earth and the significance of your thoughts must be established. You must establish ethical, emotional and logical appeal to change someone's thoughts the way you want them to believe. With the knowledge of ethos, pathos and logos you can predetermine in your mind, before releasing your cavalry into the world, that you are right. However, remember. These persuasive functions serve like a three legged stool, the absence of any one will collapse the whole purpose. With all of the legs present, you have the ability to carry the weight of the world.
SCREEN CAST VIDEO ANALYSIS
FORMAL COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAY
Resting on one’s laurels is a sin for the ambitious. I believe that my exemplary writer, Adnan Sharif, would agree with this claim. His essay “Beating the Competition” about analyzing persuasion in other people’s essays, is one such exemplary work that could have gone one step further. I believe that through working on the exemplary aspects of Adnan Sharif’s essay such as the metaphors, style and diction, one can obtain great literary experience while refining the original piece into a further exemplary art work.
Adnan Sharif’s exemplary literary choices become evident as one delves deeper into his essay. He is able to connect abstract topics and explain it through his stream of thought. He uses an interesting metaphor of persuasion with concepts of warfare as seen in the sentence, “I will show you how Mike Morita used these principles effectively and poorly, and this knowledge will arm you, with the bullets of persuasion” (Sharif). What makes this exemplary is that he alludes to this metaphor without letting the concepts become too arbitrary. He hence keeps the audience engaged. He sticks strictly to the prompt and he brings about interesting viewpoints regarding the importance of persuasion. He starts by mentioning how persuasion is a “skill at demand” (Sharif), and he explains it to be due to the “competition” (Sharif). However he does not elaborate further on and this is where I believe he begins to lose some of his audience. Although exemplary for the large part with the intertwining of complex ideas, I believe by delving deeper into conceptual meanings through revised diction and sentence structure while also continuing the allusions to warfare, this essay can be further elevated.
To elevate Adnan’s work I first highlighted what I thought was incorrect or vague word choice. Then in order to change it I asked myself the metacognitive question “how can my input enhance the concepts that are already present?”. I decided to correct word choice in a way that is clearer to send the same message. For example, I changed “higher you” (Sharif) to “improve self efficacy”. I believe that Adnan, sometime’s reverted to conversational language which is a skill that works for only a very specialised audience. I tried to make such changes throughout the essay in order to keep in mind the different types of audiences. Apart from the grammatical errors (which were often just silly mistakes), the only other aspect was the use of prolonged sentences. For example, “That is because Morita has successfully provided an ethical appeal to his audience that Perry was an acceptable human being, this further strengthened with the presence of shaming Dick” (Sharif). I believe such prolonged sentences may derail the attention of the audience. I therefore changed it to two separate sentences that are clearcut and concise. Shortening the sentences to concise and direct sentences and changing the diction in order to relay the central message were the two central revisions I had to perform.
The learning process for me came from the similarities drawn between my own writing and Adnan Sharif’s writing. I observed many mistakes of my own from the past, and I drew connections between what he excelled at and what I excel at. I believe that he would have reached higher levels of literary excellence if only he had stuck to the essay longer than he had. Also, I believe some of his word choices were affected by his requirement to use words from his vocabulary project. Nonetheless, I learnt that iteration leads to building a better understanding of a subject, and that external opinions are valuable regardless of whether they are agreeable. As Adnan Sharif mentioned “We live in a global age where we are exposed to a large influx of ideas” and “people” (Sharif), and therefore we must acknowledge every piece of information given to us portraying their perspectives to be valuable to our learning. Observing literature and trying to refine it is a great way to reinforce this learning process. That is the power of language. That is the power of literature.
Adnan Sharif’s exemplary literary choices become evident as one delves deeper into his essay. He is able to connect abstract topics and explain it through his stream of thought. He uses an interesting metaphor of persuasion with concepts of warfare as seen in the sentence, “I will show you how Mike Morita used these principles effectively and poorly, and this knowledge will arm you, with the bullets of persuasion” (Sharif). What makes this exemplary is that he alludes to this metaphor without letting the concepts become too arbitrary. He hence keeps the audience engaged. He sticks strictly to the prompt and he brings about interesting viewpoints regarding the importance of persuasion. He starts by mentioning how persuasion is a “skill at demand” (Sharif), and he explains it to be due to the “competition” (Sharif). However he does not elaborate further on and this is where I believe he begins to lose some of his audience. Although exemplary for the large part with the intertwining of complex ideas, I believe by delving deeper into conceptual meanings through revised diction and sentence structure while also continuing the allusions to warfare, this essay can be further elevated.
To elevate Adnan’s work I first highlighted what I thought was incorrect or vague word choice. Then in order to change it I asked myself the metacognitive question “how can my input enhance the concepts that are already present?”. I decided to correct word choice in a way that is clearer to send the same message. For example, I changed “higher you” (Sharif) to “improve self efficacy”. I believe that Adnan, sometime’s reverted to conversational language which is a skill that works for only a very specialised audience. I tried to make such changes throughout the essay in order to keep in mind the different types of audiences. Apart from the grammatical errors (which were often just silly mistakes), the only other aspect was the use of prolonged sentences. For example, “That is because Morita has successfully provided an ethical appeal to his audience that Perry was an acceptable human being, this further strengthened with the presence of shaming Dick” (Sharif). I believe such prolonged sentences may derail the attention of the audience. I therefore changed it to two separate sentences that are clearcut and concise. Shortening the sentences to concise and direct sentences and changing the diction in order to relay the central message were the two central revisions I had to perform.
The learning process for me came from the similarities drawn between my own writing and Adnan Sharif’s writing. I observed many mistakes of my own from the past, and I drew connections between what he excelled at and what I excel at. I believe that he would have reached higher levels of literary excellence if only he had stuck to the essay longer than he had. Also, I believe some of his word choices were affected by his requirement to use words from his vocabulary project. Nonetheless, I learnt that iteration leads to building a better understanding of a subject, and that external opinions are valuable regardless of whether they are agreeable. As Adnan Sharif mentioned “We live in a global age where we are exposed to a large influx of ideas” and “people” (Sharif), and therefore we must acknowledge every piece of information given to us portraying their perspectives to be valuable to our learning. Observing literature and trying to refine it is a great way to reinforce this learning process. That is the power of language. That is the power of literature.