Future Attitudes In Literacy

“Past Experiences and Future Attitudes in Literacy”, is an article written by Erika Jackson. In the article Jackson stated several claims of why having a positive past literacy experience is essential to an individuals’ future literary journey. Jackson made this claim by interviewing people of various ages. She wanted to know what had people taken away from their past learning experience. Did they lean toward a more negative or positive view of learning? Jackson made a successful claim, with various reasons to support it. In her claim, Jackson used several rhetorical appeals to explain why boosting children’s’ self-esteem while learning at a young age will make them love reading and writing more in the future. Her appeals included; ethos, …show more content…
In order to reach out to the audience the writer must appeal to their readers. This means the writer must know their audiences… demographics. Jackson wrote her article for people of various ages and backgrounds. She used pathos in her article to play off of her audience emotions. In the article Jackson states,” …there was one event that everyone seemed to have gone through in one way or another (Jackson 132).” This particular excerpt from the article is an example of how Jackson relied on the emotions of her audience to prove her claim. She forced them to think about a past learning event. Jackson knew that by forcing them to think about a past learning situation, that would spark an emotional connection. The audience would immediately think about a situation that caused them either emanate happiness or pain. Later in the article Jackson explains what she notices from her experiment, “I also noticed that everyone’s really bad or really good experiences with literacy were recalled with great detail, as if they happened yesterday (Jackson 133).” In this excerpt, she went on to further her claim using pathos by connecting the dots and realizing that making her audience think about their past brings up many emotions. Some emotions that should or should not be brought up. Jackson did a great job by using pathos to support her claim. Since she used people of multiple age groups, she got various answers. They all shared something …show more content…
Jackson goes even further to embellish facts into her article. As the final chance to win over her audience Jackson includes facts the she noticed from her own experiment, “I have found recurring patterns: when students were good at certain literacy skills and it was brought to theirs and others’ attention, it resulted in positive literacy growth (Jackson 133). This is the type of information some audiences of older age want to know. They search for the specific truth in arguments. They want to know how the writer found their truth and why. Jackson including her findings made her seem serious about her argument. She observed her subjects enough to notice the similarities that all shared, and this showed her awareness. Later on in the article Jackson gives information that she researched on her own, “Some scientists believe dopamine causes frontal neurons to hold onto some temporary memories for longer, which may make them easier to remember in the future.” This sentence states a fact that Jackson took time to research which shows that she was serious about the argument. If she did not care, she would not have taken the time to do psychology research. Her research portrayed her overzealous knowledge and love for her argument.
The main point is Jackson put her all into her argument. She gave multiple valid reasons for why she felt so strongly about her claim. She did not lack the essentials, instead she went above and beyond