The Breakdown:

NAME	PAPER 1	PAPER 2	PAPER 3	PAPER 4
Barton	C	B	C+	D
Engel	C-/D+	B/B-	B+	D
Metcalf	B-	C+	B-	F
Muecke	C+	B+	B	D
Newsom	D	A-	A-/B+	C-/D+
Paszek	C-	B	A-	D+
Pellerin	C+	B+	B	D
Pruchnic	C+	B	B+	F
Risse	C-/D	C-	B-/C+	D
Sain	C	B	A-	D
Winckles	B	B+	C	D
AVERAGE	C/C+	B	B/B+	D

Paper 1 (Kohl’s & Candies’)

• You should be talking about the effects of this advertisement here, as well as how it is effective.  If you’re going to handle this later, you should still point to it and let the reader know what’s coming.

• This is interesting-I want to know more, though. What causes this addiction? Why do they want these clothes so much? Why does it make them feel good about themselves? You need a little more analysis here.

• The next few paragraphs, while nicely detailed summaries about your chosen ads, are too much summary. You need either to build more analysis into the description of each ad, or else to condense the summaries (maybe into a single paragraph) and then include more analysis afterwards.

• Wikipedia is not a credible source…

• Awkward

• Information about the pricing and affordability does not speak to the overall effectiveness of the advertisements. Your argument seems to be that the Kohls/Candies ad are geared toward young females, but bargain pricing may attract any demographic.

• (GC) Overall, I think that this paper makes some pertinent points about advertisement, but unfortunately these points become lost in some of the provided commentary.  While your discussion on the impact that these ads have on young teenage girls is vital to the rhetorical analysis, the argument is bogged down by the inclusion of sales prices and discount opportunities that are not relevant to Candie’s ads, but rather Kohl’s marketing overall.

Paper 2 (“Oil Man”)

• Your intro. Paragraph is fragmented.  You have put a lot of info. and a number of claims in here without explaining how they relate to one another, and without really delivering a thesis or main point.  You want your reader to always be clear on your argument, as well as why they are reading it.  At this point I am not.

• This should appear earlier in your paper. It will help the overall structure of your argument if your reader is aware early on that you will address the way Pickens’ uses these elements.

• This is good in that it talks about the issue and the commercials you are going to talk about, but it still lacks a thesis. What claim or argument is Pickens making and what rhetorical devices is he using to make it?

• Excellent! Here you draw a connection to the images in the scenes and it effect on the viewer.

• Your paper would really benefit from the use of transitions between paragraphs.  Remember, you are guiding the reader through the paper, and you don’t want to lose them along the way. Refer to the books that you’ve been provided with this semester. There is a section on transitions that will be particularly helpful to your writing.

• (GC) You’ve made some good points in this paper, but you spend quite a lot of time providing background information and physically describing the commercials frame-by-frame.  This time should be spent analyzing the rhetorical moves being made in the commercials.  You do address these, but I think you could have said more.  Why do you think Pickens, a self-proclaimed oil-man, is doing these commercials?  What is he trying to get?  You discuss what you think he is trying to make us do, but you don’t say why he is doing it in the first place. / Also, I think your paper could have benefited by taking more time to think about how you are organizing your ideas, how you are supporting your ideas, working on transitions between ideas, and generally polishing your wording and presentation.  You might consider taking your next paper to the writing center to work out some of these issues before handing it in.

Paper 3 (“Spongebob Hotpants”)

• While this information is interesting, I am not sure if it advances any discussion on the rhetorical devices used in the commercial. Be careful not to lose your argument in sales statistics.

• (GC) …I think all of the information you need is here, it just needs to be pared down and rearranged – make a clear claim and then support it with evidence. For example, “Burger King uses sex and Spongebob to market 99 cent meals to both parents and kids, by utilizing images, music, and sex appeal.” This not only makes an argument, but also provides an organizational structure for your argument.

• Avoid repeating yourself this closely in your conclusion. The conclusion should offer something new: a further insight, a broader application, some closing thoughts, or so on.

• Watch your use of certain words.  I don’t think that the term “deviating” means what you intend it to mean within the context of this sentence.  I would use the term “distracting” instead.

• I don’t think this [“implicit”] is the correct work choice here. There are a number of instances in this essay where you have chosen words that are close to the meaning you seek, but not quite accurate. Another example is at the end of this paragraph where you talk about ads “deviating” people from the messaging.

• I don’t understand the points you’re trying to make here. I think you may just have mis-worded these sentences. But as it’s written, you question why a kid’s mean would include a toy. That seems pretty obvious to me.

• (GC) Overall, I find that you are working pretty effectively to address some of the issues that we have been discussing in class this semester.  Although you have a fairly clear sense of what we are doing with this type of work, your execution is lacking on certain levels.  I recommend that you spend some time working with your thesis and organizing statements.  The paper suffers because the reader is unable to identify what it is that you are interested in talking about in specificity, at least at the beginning. Also, you fail to use transitions, to provide adequate support for some of the details that you produce, and you fail to reference the rhetorical tropes that we have been discussing this semester.  Your task was to “…choose an advertisement, an advertising campaign, or a recurring trope across several advertisements that you find rhetorically interesting. Write an analysis of your chosen topic that will help your reader—i.e., your instructor and the class or some other audience that would be interested—see how the ad works to influence its audience, both through its images and its text.”  Although I think that you remain fairly attentive to how the advertisement influences the audience, I’m not sure that you really work out the details of the tropes that you identify.

Paper 4 (“Sex Sells Fast Food”)

• This looks to be a potential site for a decent rhetorical analysis. Can you say more on the ways in which men and women are targeted differently in the Burger King ads? Why would they want to only focus on men?

• Lots of grammar errors in this sentence. It should read “Using sex to sell food, especially fast food, seems somewhat unusual.” I will indicate some of these other errors, but overall make sure to proofread carefully.

• Overall, it seems that you have a good sense that sex is being used in Burger King commercials to sell hamburgers.  I like that you picked multiple ads to prove your point and that you talked about how BK is trying to link sex and burgers.  However, though you mention three ads, there was not much description of what was going on rhetorically within them.  Furthermore, I felt that there was not really a main theme guiding the paper other than, “there is sex in the ads.”  While this is true, what I really wanted to know was why there was sex in the ads.  How was it used rhetorically and why to sell hamburgers?  I think you were onto something when you said that “Burger King found a way to relate sex to being hungry.” but you never really back that up or explain how that works.  Work on clarifying your ideas and really supporting any claims you make.  If this support comes from a source, either in print or on the web, make sure to cite it in MLA style and include a works cited page. / I think you are on the right track, just make sure to spend the time to really dig beneath the surface – if you need help on this, I would be happy to talk to you during office hours, or feel free to visit the Writing Center in the UGL.

• (GC) The assignment was to analyze the rhetorical devices at work in an ad/ad campaign and make an argument about how those advertisements work and/or whether or not they are effective.  You don’t make an argument in your paper, and your discussion of the advertisements is limited to either physically describing the ads, or to talking generally about sex in advertising.  As such, you have not fulfilled the assignment.  The claims you make should focus on developing and illustrating your argument; as it is, your claims are unfocused and unsupported by any external sources or logical conclusions.  You need to work on determining first what your argument is (with regards to the goals of the specific assignment), and then organizing your ideas/information in the way which best expresses your argument.  If you would like to conference with me on this paper or on your writing in general, please make an appointment to see me.  Before you hand in your next paper, I want you to schedule at least one session with the writing center.  They will be able to help you work out some of these issues.

General Comments About General Comments:

• (1) Not bad at all, Andrea. This was generally well-written (with some notable exceptions – see comments above). You also did a particularly good job of describing the ads in great – and very readable – detail. However, many of the elements of this paper seem somewhat underdeveloped. For instance, what is the relation, specifically, between the ads and Kohl’s sales policies? Could you have mentioned this in regards to any ad campaign associated with the store, or is there something about the Candies’ ads in particular? You might have made this connection clearer by seizing on something you mention in the first paragraph – that the commercials inspire “urgency” (as do temporary sales, right?). / Also, although I get the appeal of celebrity endorsements, this paper would have been stronger if you had focused on why these particular women were chosen as representatives, or how the differences in the commercials show some kind of change (as well as continuity) in the campaign. I’d keep these issues in mind – mainly the importance of development and detail – when working on Project Two. Otherwise, keep up the good work. / Score: 7.7/10

• (2) Nice work, Benjamin. This was concise, had a clear argument (though, as mentioned above, you aren’t exactly clear, at least initially, in stating the argument explicitly), and generally well-written (with some exceptions – see comments above). Overall, a job well done. Take the comments above seriously — particularly the ones that involve sentence-level issues — but otherwise, keep up the good work. / Score: 8.5/10

• (3) Very nice work here, Genna. Aside from a few minor missteps with word choice and grammar (see comments above), this was well-written. Additionally, you made some very salient points about an interesting subject (the BK ad) as part of a broader trend (the use of “adult-oriented” ads promoting children’s products). At times, however, as mentioned above, it seems like you lost the through-line to your argument. The department is assembling a reader of student essays to be published for use in future 1020 courses; I think a solid revision of this essay would be a strong candidate for inclusion. Let me know if you’d be up for revising for this purpose. If you are, I’ll add a bonus point to your grade. Keep up the good work. / Score: 8.8/10

• (4) There are some solid observations here, Leandra, about the exploitive nature of hip-hop videos and lyrics. Overall, your point is well-taken and the examples you provide are effective in supporting that point. However, this project is undermined in two significant ways. For one, it doesn’t fulfill the central objectives of the assignment as described in our syllabus. Although I can see how videos could be taken to be advertisements for a song or album, you don’t make the connection explicitly in this essay. Perhaps more problematically, you also spend a decent amount of time talking about degrading lyrics, which are part of the product themselves (and thus not really an element of marketing). I can see how you could make these connections, but you do not do so in the paper. Similarly, although you do provide a few examples of artists guilty of this trend (and compelling statistics about how large the problem is generally), you don’t spend any significant time analyzing individual instances of the items under review (a requirement of the project). Secondly, this essay also suffers from some pretty significant grammatical problems (see comments above). We’ll go over a few of these in more detail in class this week, but you need to make sure you prevent them from occurring (at least with such frequency) in future projects (one in which I’ll be stressing this issue more). It may be that only more careful proofreading is necessary, but if you find grammar and sentence-level issues to continue to be a problem, I’d advise that you come see me in the office and/or make an appointment at the Writing Center. Score: 5/10