Week 2

One of our projects in my English 101 class required us to create an auditory essay in which we had to speak about a person, place, or event and its significance to the ASU community. For sources, I conversed with several people that I know are well affiliated with the university and had one on one interviews about the importance of school spirit. The whole point of this project was to demonstrate to the audience that our topic did coincide with the ASU community. Persuasion does indeed require the use of ethos, pathos, or logos; any type of persuasion requires these elements in order to be successful in my opinion. When persuading, one must appeal to the other person in a form that will intrigue or spark an idea coinciding with the argument one is presenting. After analyzing this particular project, I find that there is an abundant amount of pathos within most of the essay. School spirit is very much an emotion one can feel, or not. For example, the person I interviewed comes from a family of ASU alumni, so it is logical that he himself believes that Arizona State University is among the best of institutions. His involvement with a pep squad on campus is how he appeals to the student body to encourage them to attend sporting events more often. In the audio essay he does go on to say how he believes such involvement helps mold the community of students and faculty on campus and how in a way unites the university. I cannot say there were many logical or ethical points in this piece; most of the statements recorded came from personal experiences or were personal opinions. However, all opinions were reasonable to support the argument that school spirit does indeed create a more friendly environment especially for first year students.