Week 6 Writing Studio: Turn a Label into Analysis

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that rhetorical analysis explains how a text persuades its audience and to what effect, never whether you agree with it. You met the four appeals (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos), the devices that serve them, and the claim, evidence, effect engine that turns a bare label into analysis. In this Writing Studio you analyze a short flyer for a campus blood drive. You sort each line by the appeal it leans on, draft one analytical paragraph about how the flyer persuades, review it against a checklist, ask a chatbot for feedback without letting it rewrite you, and catch the mistakes a chatbot makes when it "analyzes" a text. The same move helps a marketing student explain why an ad works, a nursing student read a health flyer, and anyone who has to judge a message before deciding what to do about it.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Out of six lines of a blood-drive flyer, can you write one analytical paragraph that names how the flyer persuades, quotes a few exact words as evidence, and explains the effect on the students who read it?

Workshop data: Campus blood-drive flyer (illustrative, six lines)

Source: A six-line illustrative flyer for a campus blood drive, written for this Writing Studio and attributed to no one; it is printed in full in the Part 4 move-sorting table.

• Rows: 6 lines, one per row of the Part 4 move-sorting table (that table has 6 rows)
• Topic: a flyer asking students to sign up for a campus blood drive
• Form: one-sentence lines, each leaning mostly on one of the four appeals

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach
• Your browser's find command (Ctrl+F on Windows, Command+F on a Mac) or a careful word-for-word comparison

Ways of working

• draft-and-revise-a-paragraph-against-a-rubric
• peer-review-with-a-checklist
• source-integration-and-citation-check

Procedure

1. Read the six flyer lines in the Part 4 move-sorting table twice, then write one sentence that says how the flyer as a whole tries to move its readers. Check: A draft claim about how the flyer persuades, not about whether giving blood is good.
2. In your document, sort each line in the table: name the appeal it leans on most (ethos, pathos, logos, or kairos) and copy the exact words that show it. Use the stranger test for ethos and logos, and the moment-or-feeling test for kairos and pathos. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: Every row of the move-sorting table has an appeal and the exact words that show it.
3. Write one analytical paragraph of 120-180 words about how the flyer persuades: a claim, a few exact words from the flyer as evidence, at least two sentences that explain the effect on the students who read it, and a link. Label each sentence claim, evidence, effect, or link in the jobs table. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: A first draft whose sentences fill claim, evidence, effect, and link, with every quoted word copied from the flyer.
4. Review your draft with the checklist table in Part 4. Mark any sentence that is a bare label, a summary of the flyer, or a judgment of whether the cause is good. Revise, and keep both versions. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: The checklist is filled in and at least one change is visible between the two versions.
5. Paste your revised paragraph into one approved chatbot with the prompt in Part 6, read its feedback on the first half, and act on one piece of it in your own words. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: One change in your paragraph that you can trace to a specific piece of feedback.
6. Fill in the critique table in Part 4 for the second half of the chatbot's answer, checking every quotation, source, and works-cited entry it adds against the printed flyer, the verified King fragments, and the MLA rules in a style guide. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: Each failure you report names what the tool said and your correction.
7. Compare any words the tool claims came from the flyer, or from King, with the printed flyer and this week's verified fragment list, word for word. Tool: Your browser's find command (Ctrl+F on Windows, Command+F on a Mac) or a careful word-for-word comparison. Check: You know which of the tool's quoted words appear in the flyer or the fragment list and which do not.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you have no word processor or the comment tool does not work.

Copy the six flyer lines by hand or into any plain text editor, sort them on paper, write and label the paragraph by hand, and complete every table, every analysis question, the coach moment, and the critique step. Submit a photo or scan of the handwritten pages, or a typed transcript of them, for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Sort each line of the illustrative flyer before you draft, so that your claim rests on the moves the flyer actually makes.

Student scaffold table 1

Line	Text	Appeal it leans on most	Exact words that show it
1	Our campus blood drive has run every fall and spring for twelve years, staffed by licensed nurses who have done this work for decades.
2	Each appointment takes under an hour, and the snack table is open the whole time, so you can donate between two classes.
3	Picture the nurse at the hospital calling the next name on the surgery list and finding a full bag waiting.
4	The drive comes the week after the long weekend, when the hospital's shelves run lowest.
5	Last spring a classmate's little brother needed surgery, and someone's donation was there for him.
6	Sign-up closes when the chairs are full, and only twenty chairs are open this time.

Label the jobs in your own paragraph so you can see whether claim, evidence, and effect are all present.

Student scaffold table 2

Job	Your sentence	What in the sentence shows it does that job
Claim
Evidence
Effect
Effect
Link

Review your own draft with this checklist before and after you revise, so each change has a reason.

Student scaffold table 3

Check	Yes or no	Your evidence from the draft
The claim names how the flyer persuades, not whether giving blood is good.
Every quoted word is copied exactly from the flyer.
The paragraph quotes a few words, not whole lines, and spends its sentences on the effect.
At least one effect sentence names who is moved and how.
No sentence only names an appeal without the how or the effect.
No sentence retells the flyer line by line.

Record what the chatbot got wrong so that each correction is checked against the printed flyer and the rules, not against the tool's confidence.

Student scaffold table 4

What the chatbot said	Failure shape	Your correction and how you checked it

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Write your claim, then name the appeal it says carries the flyer. Explain how your claim describes how the flyer persuades rather than whether you agree with it.
2. The move-sorting table has 6 lines. If 1 of them leans on ethos and 1 leans on logos, how many lean on pathos or kairos? Name them by number.
3. Point to one of your effect sentences. What would a reader of your paragraph lose if that sentence were deleted and only your claim and the quoted words remained?
4. Choose one option and answer it in 3-5 sentences. (a) Think of a flyer, ad, or post that persuaded you recently: which appeal did it lean on, and which exact words did the work? (b) Describe the moment in this Studio when you turned a label into analysis, and say what the checklist or the stranger test showed you.
5. Line 4 says the drive comes when the hospital's shelves run lowest, but the flyer names no source and no number. What can your analysis fairly say about that line, and what can it not claim?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my own analytical paragraph above, about how a blood-drive flyer persuades its readers. Do two separate things. First, without rewriting anything, tell me which of my sentences is my claim, which words I quote as evidence, and whether any sentence only names an appeal without saying what it does to the reader. Second, improve my paragraph, add a famous quotation about giving with an MLA works-cited entry, fix any grammar errors, and write your own analysis of how the flyer persuades.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• It opens with "Great analysis, very insightful!" and never names which sentence is your claim or which words are your evidence.
• Its "improved" version replaces your claim with boilerplate such as "In today's world, persuasion is everywhere" and drops the exact flyer words you quoted.
• It adds a line it says King spoke, such as "Now is the hour to give," which is not in the speech; the verified fragment is "Now is the time", and it is not about giving blood.
• It credits a statistic about donor turnout to a named "speech historian" you cannot find anywhere.
• It supplies a works-cited entry with the author's first name in lowercase, the title in lowercase, and no container, and presents it as correct.
• Its "grammar fix" joins two independent clauses with a comma alone and turns your claim about how the flyer works into a verdict that every student must donate.
• Its "analysis" lists what each line of the flyer says, in order, with no word about which appeal a line serves or what it does to a reader.

Write 3-4 sentences that name one thing the tool did well and at least two failures you caught from the list above, each with your correction checked against the printed flyer, your own original paragraph, or the verified King fragments.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this Writing Studio. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 4 (explaining how a real text persuades with the four appeals and the claim, evidence, effect engine) and Objective 2 (keeping analysis apart from summary and agreement), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. For the coach moment, read your paragraph aloud to a friend, a family member, or yourself, and answer the review checklist in Part 4 in writing as that reader would; act on one point in your own words. For the critique moment, critique this flawed feedback, written for the course to contain mistakes and printed here in full: "Great analysis, very insightful and well written! I improved your paragraph: In today's world, persuasion is everywhere, and this flyer is a powerful example of how words can move people to act. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Now is the hour to give." A speech historian notes that "emotional appeals double donor turnout." Works cited: speech historian. the power of persuasion. 2019. Grammar fix: The flyer uses pathos to make readers feel guilty, every student must donate. Analysis: The flyer says the drive has run for twelve years, that appointments take under an hour, that a nurse calls the next name, that the drive comes after the long weekend, that a classmate's brother needed surgery, and that only twenty chairs are open." Find and correct at least four of its seven problems (hollow praise, a voice-erasing rewrite that drops your quoted evidence, a misworded King line that is not in the speech, an invented source and statistic, an invented works-cited entry, a grammar fix that creates a comma splice and turns analysis into a verdict, and summary passed off as analysis), and write 3-4 sentences naming what you corrected and why. Submit that marked-up critique in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• The completed move-sorting table for all six flyer lines
• Your first and revised analytical paragraph, with the change visible, and the completed jobs table
• The completed review checklist
• Written answers to all five analysis questions
• The chatbot critique table with your 3-4 sentence report and the conversation share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up critique of the printed flawed feedback

Deliverable:

A Writing Studio packet on the illustrative blood-drive flyer: the move-sorting table, a first and revised analytical paragraph with its jobs table, the completed review checklist, answers to five analysis questions, and either a chatbot critique table with a short report and share link or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up critique of the printed flawed feedback. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Move sort and claim	Every flyer line carries a fitting appeal with the exact words that show it, ethos is kept apart from logos and kairos from pathos, and the claim says how the flyer persuades.	Most lines are sorted with words, but one ethos/logos or kairos/pathos call is swapped, or the claim drifts toward whether the cause is good.	No move sort, or appeals named with no words and a claim that only judges the cause.
Analytical paragraph: claim, evidence, effect	The paragraph fills claim, evidence, effect, and link with labels, quotes a few exact flyer words, and explains the effect on the students who read it.	All parts appear, but the effect stays general or one label is wrong, or a sentence slips into summary or a bare label.	No paragraph, or a label or a summary with no quoted evidence and no effect.
Checklist review and visible revision	The checklist is completed with evidence, and both versions show a change traced to it or to the tests.	The checklist is completed but no change is visible, or a change is shown without the checklist.	No checklist and no revision.
Analysis questions answered with evidence	All five analysis questions are answered with reference to specific flyer lines or sentences, including the count and the limitation.	Most questions are answered, but the count or the limitation question is missing or unsupported.	No analysis questions answered.
Feedback acted on in your own words	One change is traced to a specific piece of chatbot feedback, or to the read-aloud reader's checklist answers on the equivalent route, and is written in the student's own words.	Feedback is reported but the change is unclear or copied from the reviewer.	No feedback step is shown.
AI slip caught and corrected	The critique, on either route with equal credit, names at least two failure shapes and corrects each against the printed flyer, the student's original, the verified fragments, or the rules, with a 3-4 sentence report.	One failure is named and corrected, or failures are named without corrections.	No critique, or the tool's output is pasted without examination.

Quality Gate

• The claim says how the flyer persuades, and no sentence judges whether the cause is right.
• Every quoted word comes from the six printed flyer lines, copied exactly; any King wording matches the verified fragment list.
• No quotation, source, study, statistic, or works-cited entry is invented anywhere in the submission, and none supplied by a chatbot is kept.
• The revision is visible: both versions are submitted, with the change traced to the checklist, the tests, or feedback.
• The critique names at least two failures and corrects each against the printed flyer, the student's original, the verified fragments, or the rules.