Purpose:

Throughout this unit you will be reading texts that help you understand and have language to communicate why or why not a text is effective. This builds on your study of rhetorical situations in the first unit but takes the next step, asking you to analyze the effectiveness of a medical text from a user’s perspective, critiquing its accessibility for users with lower levels of health literacy.

To get started:

Explore the web for health websites or health brochures that are somehow related to your field of interest. You are looking for texts from a patient’s perspective. This means that for this project, you are probably using Google instead of Google Scholar or a library database.

To make this assignment more relevant to you, consider starting with a medical question or condition that you are a loved one has had or experienced.

After you’ve gathered a few, take a look at each. With health literacy and effective text construction in mind, which text is the least successful for its audience? Which text are the least inclusive? Select the “worst” text to rhetorically analyze, critique, and improve.

This paper has two goals:

Goal I: Rhetorical Analysis

Use rhetorical analysis to

Examine elements of the rhetorical situation, like you did in your analyses in the first unit.
Who is the target audience? Does the target audience match the presentation of material on the website? How and why?
What is the purpose? Does the information presented clearly convey the purpose to the intended audience? How and why? Keep your audience in mind here. They know what their text’s purpose was, so how can you connect a quick explanation of the purpose to an evaluation of how that purpose isn’t being met because of flaws in its presentation?
What is the exigence behind this website? Does the information the authors chose to include clearly meet the purpose to address the exigence? Is the exigence clear? How and why? In this case, exigence is very much connected to why it is so important that the text be understandable to the audience. For example, if the text is about early warning signs of skin cancer, why is important that the text be understandable to a broad public audience?
Connect your analysis to the concept of health literacy. Use the unit readings and strategies (Health Literacy Online (Links to an external site.)and Plain Language.gov (Links to an external site.)).
How does the design of the text affect the audience’s ability to understand the purpose?
Assess the text’s helpfulness in relation to health literacy. Who will understand this material and why? What is inaccessible and why?
Pay attention to bias. Think about all the different biases you learned about and thought about in the Identifying Biases discussion board. What biases if any did you notice in the website? If you biases are not apparent, how is the text intentionally inclusive? You can start your noticing with looking at the representation of diversity in images and the use of inclusive language. What else stands out to you?
Keep in mind that lack of bias is not the same thing as being intentionally inclusive.
Make sure you are using specific examples from your text to illustrate your analysis.

Goal II: Recommendations for Improvement

Make improvements to the text you selected based upon your analysis. Narrate the changes you would need to make to make your text appropriate and helpful for an audience with lower health literacy levels.

Audience:

For this paper, pretend that you are writing to the creators of the text you are analyzing and improving. This will help you think more specifically in both your analysis and your recommendations. You should maintain a formal tone (imagine yourself as a Public Relations company, perhaps). Because you want them to improve and put out helpful information, you will need to be critical but not rude. Work on delivering helpful feedback that is neither dramatic nor dismissive. Also use language that is relevant to them. Using terms like, “Rhetorical analysis” and “exigence” may not be understood. What language can you use that will be understood, making it easy to follow your recommendations? Also consider what information doesn’t need to go in your paper. For example, if the creator’s of the text are writing about skin cancer, will you need to explain to them what skin cancer is?

Organization:

You can choose to organize your paper in different ways. One option might be making your recommendations as you do your analysis; for each specific you critique, you recommend a revision and explain it then.

To help you organize and to deliver your recommendations effectively, you will need to use APA section headings (see Section Headings for help) that are informative and relevant to your audience. For example, don’t label a section, Rhetorical Analysis, because that won’t mean anything to your audience. Instead think of what the purpose of that section is. How would you briefly capture that idea?

Requirements:

1250 words (double spaced, Times New Roman) not counting title or References
Includes a thesis that makes an argument about your key recommendations. Bold your thesis.
Includes an introduction and conclusion that are helpful to your audience (the creators of the text)
Uses APA
Uses APA section headings
Cites all sources (quotes AND paraphrases) in APA format, especially when referencing the text and what it does.
Includes a Reference list with at least three sources
One of which is your text
At least one from the course readings. You should be demonstrating in your paper that you have done the unit readings and that you are basing your analysis and recommendations on some of those (researched and published) ideas. That being said, it is common for students to not realize that those ideas need to be cited in your paper. For example, you learned about how having content centered on the page affects readers from some source, so make sure to cite that source.
Think of your use of citations as necessarily building your credibility with your audience. Showing your audience, the creators of the text, that your recommendations are grounded in research will help them take your ideas seriously.
You can also uses other websites on your topic (perhaps that deliver that same type of information) to illustrate how something was done more or less effectively. In other words, you can use sources to help bring credibility to your evaluation and argument.
As always, if you have questions about this assignment, please feel free to email me or visit me during office hours.