Compare / Contrast Essay
Purpose
Your focus on this paper is to look BEYOND the obvious similarities and differences in our readings to come up with startling or unexpected points of comparison or contrast. Therefore, you can contrast two articles that seem similar on the surface, or compare two articles that seem to reach vastly different conclusions. For instance: “Both articles are about happiness” does not reach the level of critical thinking that this paper requires.
Read, understand, and know all the principles discussed in Mosaics chapter 12. Also, review all the notes you have on prewriting, writing, editing, and revising. Throughout this section, we’ll spend considerable time on developing paragraphs, organization, and in-text citations. We’ll also discuss the following list of rhetorical elements and tools and examine how authors use them to convince their audience to do or believe something:
* Purpose / central message
* Genre
* Audience
* Tone
* Word choice
* Ethos
* Logos
* Pathos
You will succeed with this paper if you can master the compare/contrast writing strategy rather than writing two separate analyses and placing them beside each other.
The articles we will read for this unit are:
1. “True Happiness: A Conscious Decision”
2. “Aristotle Was Right—Happiness is in the Meaning”
3. “Can You Be Too Happy?”
4. “Happiness May Come with Age”
5. “Happy—the Surprisingly Simple Factors that Add Up to Feeling Good”
6. “Looking for Happiness”
7. “Positively Downbeat: Sometimes Happiness Isn’t Everything”
8. “You Can’t Buy Happiness, But You Can Rent It for Awhile”
Structure
You will need to choose ANY TWO articles and write a formal academic paper that compares and/or contrasts any of the rhetorical tools or elements listed above. For example, you may choose to discuss the differences in TONE but the similarities in AUDIENCE that your two articles display.
All formal...