Critical Writing Practices / Strategies

Writing Exercise: Some Basic Topic Sentences for Analyzing Advertisement (use book examples):

• Make a claim about how an image in your advertisement uses a specific emotional appeal.

• Make a claim about how the slogan/headline makes an emotional appeal. (How does the slogan connect to the emotional appeal? Explain yourself!)

• Make a claim about how the arrangement/placement of objects (words and images) in the advertisement support the emotional appeal you’ve claimed the ad is using…

• Make a claim about why the emotional appeal and specific content in the ad (things you’ve already discussed, perhaps) imply that the ad is geared to a specific audience – and, yes, identify within your claim who that specific audience is.

• Make a claim, reflecting again on the emotional appeal and target audience, about what the ad implies people value. To be even clearer in your claim also mention the product being sold!

***Your answers for each of the above can be what you use to guide your reader through your essay. Logically, if these become your topic sentences you can re-order them according to how you see them clarifying your larger thesis statement. (Each becomes a section of your larger essay, and you can transition between each topic with "hinge sentences"!)

• And you can also make sub-topic sentences for paragraphs that fall under each topic – this is how you can develop your essay. Use paragraphs to get as much in on the topic as necessary

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Writing Exercise 2: Seeing the bigger picture / Going global

• What cultural messages may be implied within the advertisement?

• What part/characteristic in ad is implying those messages?

• To answer, clarify “Who is being targeted in the ad?” and how you see this being the target audience. What does this say about what advertisers think this audience values?

• These, again, are simply questions that, if you ask yourself and then answer, can help you develop each section of your analysis (each topic that relates to your thesis statement)

Example: Look at the Chris Brown “Got Milk?” ad as an example. Why not use a lawyer? Why not a doctor? Why not a poet? Why not an accountant? … What does it say that musicians, actors and athletes are the ones whose status is often used to sell a product? (Discussing the possible reasons allows you to insert into your analysis what in our American society are the popular examples of achievement, according to such media. You can further discuss what these media think specific audiences want to achieve – and what these assumptions simply about cultural values / beliefs)