Rough Draft

Jori Pace         
Professor Reece
English 1020
September 7, 2014
Rough Draft Rhetorical Analysis
I feel as though this author did an awesome job at reaching their audience through this article. Her audience is anyone with a learning disability that is trying to get a college education, and searching for help. Also she is trying to reach out to teachers, parents, and the peers of these students which are struggling with a learning disability. In general this article can benefit and reach out to many audiences as she is trying to educate people on how to give people with LD a fair chance at an education. She is effectively reaching her audience by being clear and stating the steps in order for them to get help in the transition from High School to college, and also coming up with ideas to help their early educators to help them prepare for the next stage in their career in general education. At the beginning of the article in paragraph two it states: “  the number of students with disabilities who enroll each year in college has increased (Wolanin &Steele, 2004). Data from a longitudinal study in 2011 examining students with disabilities' post-high-school outcomes indicated that 15.5% of those who enrolled at 4-year institutions were identified as having LD. ADHD was not listed as a disability category, but it may have been included in the 19.5% of students who were identified as having “other health impairments” (Stanford et al., 2011). Despite enrolling, once they start to attend, students with disabilities do not keep pace with their peers without disabilities in relation to earning their degrees. Sanford and colleagues found that within 6 years of completing high school, only 29.4% of students with disabilities had complete college, as compared to 42.2% of students in the general population. Within 8 years, the percentage rises to 34.2% for students with disabilities (with no specific information about differences by disability category), and 51.2% for students without disabilities (Newman et al., 2011).”
            Another main point that the author talks about is educating the students about their own LD. She brings up a good point in the fact that students need to know why they are asking for help and they need to know what their weaknesses are in order to focus on what they should be doing to strengthen the areas that they are struggling in. In step #8 of the article it states: “Students with LD and ADHD need to know how to apply for accommodations when they get to college. So that students are effectively prepared to self-advocate, any transition program must ensure that students are aware of and understand the tests and diagnosing their learning challenges, help students develop a list of helpful accommodations, and teach students how to apply for accommodations.” There are very good strategies and ideas stated in the article to help teachers and other administrators in high school to help the students figure out what they need to be focusing on.
It takes a number of people to help out in the transitioning process but if there are enough people dedicated to helping these students, they can have the same opportunity as their peers without learning disabilities. Some information I found helpful and something I didn’t think about was that one way to really help them transition is to not make every think a piece of cake. Toward their senior year of high school it actually talked about taking away some of the help and to challenge the student more. That is the main struggle with LD, when they get into college everything is much harder and that’s where they start to struggle. They need to start to be treated like a college student toward the end of their high school education.
 Elizabeth C. Hamblet, the author of this article has a very big interest in this subject, and she seems genuinely concerned for the population of students with learning disabilities that are trying to attend college. Her article is all about giving the step by step information to help people with LD and ADHD find and apply for assistance at the University which they have chosen to attend. This author was very persuasive with the information she gave, there is very clear instructions for students to go seek for the help and guidance for their college education. Not only was she persuasive in her writing but I feel that she was also motivating. For any student who has a LD that is discouraged and think they can’t attend college, needs to read this article and the information she has clearly provided. A statement that I think sums up the purpose of this article pretty well is in paragraph number four, and it reads: “Students with ADHD have reported that they struggle because of deficits in their organizational skills, academic coping strategies, executive functions, and focusing and sustaining attention (Norvilists, Sun, & Zhang, 2010). Although most students (with and without disabilities) have to make adjustments when they get to college, these new challenges may affect students with LD and ADHD more than others because their disabilities affect learning, and planning – all of which are critical to success in this new academic environment.” This statement to me, in the article is the main focus of what she is trying to get across. Their brains work differently therefor they struggle more than the average college student. It is pretty clear from this statement what she is trying to get across here and who she is trying to reach.
The tone used in this article is a very concerned one. You can tell she really cares about this subject and has listed so many different helpful things. I feel like this article is very well put together and that all the information in it is relevant and very educating. I am interested in the Special Education field and I found this article to be very helpful. It broadened my mind to the different things we can be doing to help disabled students to attend college. There is so much more that we could be doing to make things easier for their transition. 

Reflection:

This assignment was a little easier for me than the analysis was. The strengths of my paper are that I know quite a bit about special needs and so I feel like I can relate to the author and I know what she is talking about. My weaknesses are that I still think that I am not fully understanding the assignment and including all the requirements in my paper. What I learned about writing a rhetorical analysis is that you are just kind of picking apart the article and looking and it's strengths and weaknesses. I also learned that you can just pick a side and write about it, I was thinking too deep when we were assigned this and I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was, but once it was explained I understood it and was able to easily analyze and write this paper.  

Reflection on Chapter 8 Ethos, Pathos, Logos

In the reading it say that ethos, appeals from character; Pathos, appeals to emotion; and logos, appeals to reason. The relationship between all of these is that it is to be included in your writing. They all are connected like in the rhetorical triangle from the book:"Word/Logos, Audience/Pathos, Author/ Ethos." (see page 200 of Inquiry to Academic Writing)  It is important to use this in your writing because you need all three for a reader to connect to, character, emotion, and reason are all a big part of presenting something to someone.

Jori Pace

Professor Reece

English 1020

September 5, 2014

Research Paper Proposal:

Nine Strategies to Improve College Transition Planning for Students with Disabilities

Thesis: Does the nine different strategies at the district level help students with learning disabilities, transition smoothly into college?

This article talks about nine different strategies to help students with disabilities transition into a college environment, and the different things they can do to learn how to access the help when they get to a college level. It talks about how students feel like their college courses are much too hard and that it isn’t what they were expecting because they weren’t prepared enough in high school. They talk about their different struggles and things they are having difficulties with entering into the college level. The research from this article shows that when enrolling into college courses the accommodations and services aren’t offered up front. The student is responsible to ask for, and look into getting help. It gives ideas and ways to educate families about the help that is offered to more easily transition their student. The family is required to provide and prove documentation for their student’s disability in order for them to get the special accommodations from the University. The purpose of this article is to offer different strategies to help students with disabilities accelerate and improve and the same rate as other students and to help them better understand their class requirements and what is expected from them.

To get further information about this topic, I will search more articles on this subject, look up books on this subject, and interview a Special Education teacher and ask what she is doing to help her students move on and transition onto the next level.  

The counterarguments I anticipate are those who have tried these nine methods to help their students graduate and move onto the college level, and haven’t worked. I have not seen these methods put into action myself so theoretically these might work but I myself wouldn’t know without seeing them in action. People also might argue and say that it isn’t fair that these students are expected to seek out the help themselves and that this article might be contradicting because it is listing nine different ways to help them, but then saying they are on their own to actually get the help. Those who have already missed out on this opportunity might not think it is fair that they can’t do anything about their past grades because the school didn’t inform them enough on how to get the student help from the beginning.

I will be honest, this assignment was a little confusing to me. I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing or if I was doing it right. After reading the article that I chose I wasn't positive on what I was suppose to be taking from it and I was confused on what information I needed to be using in my paper. Also I don't have a declared major yet so it was a struggle for me to find an article that I was interested enough in to write about. I don't know how effective this assignment was in helping me prepare for the final goal of writing a rhetorical analysis.