Commentary #2 for Siqi Li

First things first, the title of your essay could be a little less generic and more interesting.  In your thesis, your position is somewhat stated (you could mention that it is torture outright) also it almost reads like a question and it doesn’t include the rhetorical strategies and/or their effectiveness.  You could also mention which rhetorical strategies were effective in your thesis (Example: the argument was effective in all rhetorical strategies).  You also mentioned the title of the article after the introductory paragraph and your thesis.  It would make more sense and be easier for your readers to follow if you moved the article title within the first couple of sentences and before your thesis statement.  Each paragraph does contain a topic sentence, however not all of them provide a logical transition or give hints at the discussion to follow in the remainder of the paragraph.  I think paragraphs 3, 5, 7 and 8 should either be merged with another paragraph or placed somewhere other than a paragraph of its own because they don’t address rhetorical strategies at all.  The other paragraphs seem to have a topic sentence with a logical transition and give the reader an idea of what is ahead.  I found the essay to be lacking in the logos department.  It contained some direct quotes and paraphrasing and it should definitely be expanded.  There is some success to the appeal of logos, however the lack of information makes it less convincing than it could be.  One thing I noticed in regards to ethos in your essay was that the same concept of ethos was mentioned three separate times in three separate paragraphs.  It would make sense to combine all the separate paragraphs on ethos into one large paragraph, or separate ones that are in succession to each other because jumping from one rhetorical appeal to another and back isn’t as easy to read.  Paragraphs 4, 6 and 9 are a good example of what I am talking about.  I also noticed a similar pattern with your other appeals as well.  I think it would be easier on the readers if your organized your essay a little more so the ideas could flow better.  Using direct quotes and paraphrasing, I think the appeal to ethos is solid and manages to evaluate the success of the appeals.  The appeal to pathos is also good however, when you directly quoted the text, you didn’t cite it correctly.  Refer to paragraph 4 of your essay for the correct way to quote text directly.  Aside from that, I think it also does a good job of evaluating the success of the appeals.  The appeal of kairos is there, however it doesn’t provide effective examples either quoted or paraphrased from the source text.  The example you gave for this appeal also seemed weak and hard to follow.  The essay tried to evaluate the success in regards to the appeal of kairos but a better example could be used to make the appeal successful.  Overall, I really enjoyed reading your essay and found that some of my views are similar to yours in some respects.  If you can clean your essay up by organizing it better, provide a better appeal to logos, provide a better example for kairos, revise your introduction and thesis statement and directly quote the source text correctly then you should have a great rhetorical critique.