In China, Families Bet It All on College for Their Children

Speaking from the position of a high school junior, the competition associated with college in the United States has skyrocketed to unbelievable heights. However, ask and 16-year-old Chinese man or woman, and they will say the same. Families in China bet it all on college for their children. This article by Keith Bradsher, the Hong Kong bureau chief of The New York Times, describes the sacrifices parents in China are forced to undergo in order to provide their children with a higher education. The context of this text that prompted the writing of this article is the spikes in financial burdens that millions of lower-income Chinese parents now endure as they push their children to obtain a higher education.

      The purpose of this article is to show Americans that we are not alone in the struggle for a college education. In fact, Chinese parents are suffering even greater to reach their goal of sending their kids to a university. The audience who would get the most out of this article is American parents who are giving up their lives in order to pay for their child’s education. Not only do they have something to relate to, but they might also find that they are actually grateful for their situation in comparison to that of the Chinese.

      Keith Bradsher uses many rhetorical devices to get his message across. For example, Bradsher uses descriptive language to evoke pathos in his readers. Throughout the text, he uses endless detail to describe a family who has put it all on the line to send their daughter to college. Bradsher writes about the living and working conditions of a father who works in coal shafts everyday making only $500 dollars a month for "choking dust in claustrophobic tunnels,” in order to get the money needed to send his daughter to college. The description that accompanies this heart-breaking story of a struggling family creates a sense of sadness that makes readers not only feel bad for this family, but realize how fortunate they are to be in their situation. On the contrary, Keith Bradsher makes sure he maintains logic by including the raw facts of Chinese education. He writes, "a college degree no longer ensures a well-paying job, because the number of graduates in China has quadrupled in the last decade". The use of statistics furthers Bradsher’s logical appeal when he writes, "For a rural parent in China, each year of higher education costs six to 15 months' of labor..." Overall, both the emotion and logic fuse together to maintain a well-written text about Chinese education.

Through the use of both an emotional and logical appeal, Bradsher does get his message across to readers. The reader is able to fully imagine, understand, and relate to the troubles that the Chinese parents go through to send their children to college. Bradsher writes clearly and effectively to provide his audience with a captivating story that is sure to leave a mark. 

Danger of Too Much Calcium

          Over the past several decades, Swedish researchers have gathered research that suggests that although calcium is an important nutrient for bone health, older women who take large amounts may be at increased risk of heart disease and death. To conduct this study, researchers followed 61,433 women born between 1914 and 1948 for an average of 19 years, confirming causes of death with a Swedish government registry. After controlling for physical activity, education, smoking, alcohol and other dietary factors, they found that women who consumed 1,400 milligrams or more of calcium a day had more than double the risk of death from heart disease, compared with those with intakes between 600 and 1,000 milligrams.

The author of this text is New York-based writer, Nicholas Bakalar who specializes in medicine, health, wellness, animals, and science. This background makes Bakalar more than credible to report the findings of the researchers. The purpose of Bakalar’s article was to report Swedish research to readers in women in America who may not think of their calcium intake as a concern. Therefore, it is only logical that the audience of this article be adult women of America considering the research was targeting this sex and age group.

            Bakalar uses several rhetorical devices in order to create a logical appeal in his writing. Considering this was a research-based article, Bakalar used strong, concrete language, accompanied with scientific jargon, opposed to abstract language. This use of facts, statistics, and well-rounded data helped Bakalar appeal to the reader’s logical rather than their emotional side.

            Overall, I do believe the author achieved his purpose of reporting a concise summary of the Swedish research to the American audience. The language he employed provided the audience with an informational text in a straightforward manner, rather than an elusive one made using words that refer to ides, qualities, attitudes, and conditions that are not necessarily in numbers. Both the language and structure of the text helped the author write an effective text. 

Texting While Driving

                       

        In years past, drinking and driving was the issue when dealing with teen, and adult, drivers. However, a new problem has hit center stage. Texting while driving is one of several causes of driving accidents around the world. This advertisement is one of the many ads focused on raising awareness about this deathly problem. In this image, a headless person is driving while texting. On the top of the image it reads, “When you use a mobile while you drive, your head is somewhere else." This ad was published by La Cocina Publicidad, in Caracas, Venezuela, which further helps to illustrate the point that this is not solely a national problem, it is global.

As stated above, the context that prompted the publishing of this article is the rise of texting while driving accidents around the world. Therefore, the purpose of this image is to show drivers how distracted and unfocused he or she becomes when they text and drive. Because the driver looks to be an adult, the audience of this image is not solely teens, but drivers of all ages around the world.

            In order to achieve the purpose, La Cocina Publicidad uses rhetorical devices to get their message across to the audience. The rhetorical devices used are centered on the author’s arrangement. The author focuses on clarity and conciseness when arranging the advertisement. Not only is the reader able to decode the message to understand it quickly and completely, but the author’s design is also appropriately succinct to the message. Without a lot of thinking, viewers are able to understand the portrayed message that attention to the road is lost when a person begins to text and drive. Overall, the clarity and conciseness of this image certainly does help the author achieve his purpose in designing an ad to show the dangers of texting while driving. Readers do not have to stare long to understand the effects of this destructive decision.