A Learning Secret: Don T Take Notes With A Laptop

In “A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop,” published on Scientific American, May (2014) talks about the consequences of using laptops to write notes. She compares two note taking methods, handwriting and typing on a laptop, and try to persuade readers that using laptops is not much helpful in learning. Since Scientific American is an academic trade news website, potential readers are generally educated people and those who hold teaching position or people are students may have strong interests to read this article. In order to persuade the target audience, May employs rhetorical strategies to explain her opinion: the author appeals to logos by showing examples and statistics; the author also appeals to pathos by using emotional phrases; the author appeals to ethos by its effective writing …show more content…
At the beginning of the article, the author talks about a widely-held opinion that if students can write more content on their notes, they certainly will be better in learning. While after that, she conversely proves that this common sense is wrong. Readers will be curious because they want to investigate the answer. Another case is at the start of a paragraph. The author uses “Wrong again” as the first phrase appearing to readers. This phrase may leave an impact to readers because readers’ own argument is negated one more time and this strengthens readers’ curiosity. The author also uses some adjective words which have negative feelings when she was describing notes taking by laptops. “Students who use laptops can take notes in a fairly mindless, rote fashion, with little analysis or synthesis by the brain.” Theses dull words lead readers feel like that taking notes by laptops is not a favorable option. Overall, May are good at pathos appealing. She makes readers very curious about the article so that they are attracted to read until the end of the