Rhetorical Analysis Columnist for the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope, in her article “Writing your way to happiness”, reveals a strategy on becoming happier. Parker-Pope tries to validate the claim that writing can be a gateway to happier living. She utilizes a positive tone in order to relate to struggling college students. Although I accept the author’s claim, there are more effective ways to convince the audience of her findings. Parker-Pope begins the article stating the benefits of writing about personal experiences. This can improve ones overall health including mood disorders, boost memory, and reduce amount of doctor’s visits. Immediately I was intrigued by this claim. Parker-Pope created an interesting topic that encouraged me to continue reading. This statement is strategically placed to get the reader interested about it. Now I needed to see the research that supports her claim.…show more content… The purpose was to have students realize they just needed more time to adjust to college. These students were shown videos created by upperclassman talking about how they had adjusted. Parker-Pope follows this with the result. This was an effective approach to demonstrate the importance of this research. It provided short and long-term results. However, the findings were not significant. The percent margin of students that benefited from watching the videos to those who did not was to close. Of the students who took part, 5% dropped out within a year. Compared to 20% among the students who did not participate. With a 15% difference, this experiment does not do a great job supporting the claim. With this result, I question why the author included it in her
