Ted Talk Analysis

Video of ted talks.

– Introduce the talk title and the speaker early. Then, use the speaker’s last name only after the first reference.

– In your opening paragraph you mention that Barassi uses a pronoun to reach the audience, but you don’t have anything there. Get that in there and go deeper with ideas like that. The assignment is about analyzing how speakers reach audiences.

– The third paragraph about research has a good basic idea, but it would help a lot

for you to provide a specific example or two and why they matter. As is, you just mention that Barassi uses statistics, facts, etc., but you are too general there.

– You seem to be on to some interesting ideas in the fourth paragraph, but things aren’t totally clear. You mention logic and manipulating emotions, but you don’t go deeply into these areas. This might be an area to really consider audience. On your homework you mention that the audience is academic, but isn’t it really any parents? This could be a chance for you to break down specifics about how Barassi reaches certain audiences. You mention in this paragraph that Barassi says she isn’t there to blame parents for their online activity, but what do you really think she means by that? What are audiences supposed to think? She goes on to challenge them to think carefully about what information they are putting online and how they should fight to make sure information is used responsibly. This consideration of audience could really be turned into a main claim (see my next point).

– You have rhetorical analysis in your draft, but you don’t seem to have pulled it together under one clear thesis statement yet. Go over your ideas carefully and get an upfront thesis statement that guides your paper. It can be fairly broad to capture the different ideas you want to include. Feel free to run any thoughts past me if you would like to do so.

– You need to edit much better. You have some good ideas, but your sentences are often bumpy or contain errors. You want your final copy to read much more smoothly, so be sure to spend some time proofreading and editing. Read aloud. Read one sentence at a time starting from the end of the paper. Enlist help.