Unit 3: Post 19 (April 08, 2009)

Prewriting: Op-ed

• Read several op-eds from your chosen venue. What are the general tone and assumed audience in this venue? What is interesting or unique about these pieces?
• Community Impact Newspaper
  - The op-eds I’ve read use a lot of logos and statistics to appeal to the audience’s logic. There is a touch of pathos in them as well. A lot of the ones I read dealt with the economic situation and the sight of the closed businesses. Others spoke about the traffic situation in the growing areas of Williamson County. The assumed audience for this newspaper would be the residents in the community. They are the ones affected by many of the issues spoken of in the paper.
• Decide one specific, identifiable issue or question for your focus. It needs to be related to your overall topic for this unit, but try to target a specific aspect of that topic. Describe your choice of specific topic.
  - Highway 29’s expansions will take away the Hill Country, semi-rural feel of Georgetown and Liberty Hill. The road will cut through the San Gabriel River multiple times and also cuts multiple ancestral ranches and homes in half.
• Choose a specific course of action or approach to be taken to addressing that issue or question. Don’t just say that a policy or situation is bad. Tell your readers what should be done about it.
  - I’d like readers to speak out about these road expansions. Possible courses of actions include attending open houses, writing to the commissioners, posting comments in the multiple forums that exist for this purpose, and also filling out forms off of the city’s website.
• Determine what rhetorical appeals will be most effective for your audience (ethos, pathos, logos, style). Discuss what appeals you will use.
  - I believe, since this proposed expansion is cutting into people’s homes and often their livelihoods, pathos is the best way to go. I have some ethos in that I live off of 29, but I am, in the end, just a simple college student. Emotions and passion will work best with the audience which mainly consists of activists and residents of that area. I would also include logos in providing facts about the multiple ancestral ranches and goat farms and everything that will be affected by this. Some other facts I’d include would be about the insanity of a road that will cross the San Gabriel River twice. That river is very prone to flooding; in fact, in 2007, the river rose over 18 feet. Luckily, not too much was damaged because not too many things are built that close to river.
• Write about what will best support your points for the rhetorical situation (facts, hard evidence, personal experience, anecdotes, referring to other authorities, etc.).
  - I plan on using facts and personal experience more than anything. I have lived in Cimarron Hills for over 6 years and have seen the changes in Georgetown and Liberty Hill first-hand. Also, I have walked on the ranches that line the road, fed the goats at my friend’s house, and went floating down the San Gabriel River. The facts I plan on having would concern the history of that area and how we should be figuring out how to preserve that beautiful Hill Country instead of destroying it.
• Is there any research that you need to do?
  - Yes, I need to get more information on all the wonderful things that will be destroyed by this road. There are acres of rolling hills and hundreds of longhorns, deer, and goats. The ancestral homes and ranches I also need more information on.