I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read Q's on Rhetoric and Style

1) Prose establishes ethos with her credentials as an award winning critique, a mother of two sons, and her vast knowledge of books.

2) The author starts out with such strong language to incite engage her readers into the argument. Yes, she risks putting off readers who do not share her views, but also provides reasonable elaborations to back them up. She also used emotional language when critiquing Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and To Kill A Mockingbird,citing reasons why there are better alternatives to these school reading requirements.

3) Prose assumes that the role of reading is not to shove messages down students' throats, but also for them to experience written language as as a means of exploration and to relish in its long lasting impact for the rest of their lives.

4) The author appeals to logos with her detailed analysis and comparisons of the books she mentions.

5) The author definitely assumes the audience is somewhat familiar with the books she references. Her audience includes school teachers and the books she references is their reading curriculum, so if they don't know what she's talking about, who will? Besides, the audience only needs to understand the works in terms of how they support the author's argument, not the entire piece as a whole.

6) No, I don't agree with her analogy of Maya Angelou. She loses credibility by trashing on another author's writing style and directs the attention to the question of whether that style is legitimate rather than reinforce her proposed solutions. The analogy did not appeal to logos and failed to strengthen her argument. She also uses figurative language to compare English to fingerprints or DNA mapping or modern English classes to "test screenings used to position unreleased Hollywood films"

7)The author's purpose in piling one rhetorical question on top of another is to either deliver a point or address her own contradictions against the reading material distributed in class. 

8) Yes, she could have strengthened her argument by including interviews because it would have granted her more credibility to speak on behalf of the teachers and students.

9) According to Prose, American high school students are learning to loathe literature because:

1) Teachers tend to narrow the students' literary experience by personalizing topics of discussion.

2) The students are taught exactly how to feel about each character instead of identifying their more complex natures.

3) We provide students with literature that require lighter levels of thinking and feeling.

4) Teachers are too lazy to teach their students how to appreciate literature

5) We value writer's background more than the content of their writing.

6)Teachers use English to expand on other subjects instead of actually teaching ENGLISH.

7)Teachers treat dead writers as if they were flawless and need to be idolized instead of imperfect people whose work can be criticized.

10)Yes, the author proposed several solutions to the problem by suggesting alternative books to read and different methods of teaching. Not suggesting the solutions would weaken her argument because it contradicts her previous statement that although teachers and colleges have spoken of and accepted the decline of literacy, they do nothing to change it.