Who Are You Talking To?

Leigha VanDyke

ENG-105

February 2, 2016

Jen Santos

Who Are You Talking to?

        It would be odd if a teacher started teaching a group of Elementary students and starts showing them complicated calculus equations. Would it not make a more sense to talk about something that that group can relate to or learn from? This happens with many authors of newspaper editorials because they make their audiences too broad or do not specify an audience which makes an article not effective to the readers. The author of this article, Paul A. O’Keefe, claims that interest helps people learn faster and perform better on tasks. Although O’Keefe establishes his credibility as well as having good reasoning, the argument fails to be successful because he only targeted one of his three intended audiences, which caused the ethos, logos, and pathos to be very ineffective.

The audience was not appropriate for this editorial because the author only targeted one of the three intended audiences. The author’s states who he is talking to in the last sentence of the editorial by calling “Teachers, managers, and parents” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 14) into action. However, throughout the rest of the editorial, the author only targets the teachers and specifically teachers of middle schoolers (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 13), high schoolers (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 11), and undergraduates (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 5). This is known because of the research she has performed on only those three groups of students. Nowhere in the editorial did the author mention anything having to do with managers or parents. This makes the article unsuccessful for the majority of the audience because the information does not apply to them. Another problem with the editorial is evident in the first two paragraphs. In those few sentences the author makes it seem as though the intended audience is students -- specifically high school or college level. This is seen when the author states “WE have all had to work on a task we detest: calculus homework, for example, is boring and hard.” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 1). Neither teachers, parents, nor managers have homework let alone calculus homework. This confuses the intended audience into thinking the article was not aimed towards them but instead towards students. After stating this, though, he goes on to talking about the students in his experiments instead of talking to them. This again confuses the intended audience into wondering who the author is talking to.

The author’s use of ethos could have been very effective but it is only so for one of his three audiences which makes it ultimately, not effective. The heavy use of ethos is one of the main reasons why this article had the potential to be very successful. In the article, O’Keefe claims his main credibility by stating his research with a fellow scientist was “published recently in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 4). By stating this, the author proves that his research is credible because he is published on the subject. He even states that he “co-wrote in the Journal of Educational Psychology” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 13) with another scientist which gives the readers the same idea that the author knows what he is talking about. O’Keefe even brings in other research from “Chris S. Hulleman of the University of Virginia” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 10) which then talks about another experiment conducted on students to prove his point on how interest plays a key role in work ethic. This shows that the author not only relies on his work to prove a point but on others as well. By giving the readers another person’s research tells them that the author is not the only one doing research on the subject so it must be important to listen to. These are great credibility reasons but the author’s actual research is only focused on students which is for teachers to see and act on. The science behind the research is credible and can even be read in different journals that the author stated, but since it is not towards the other intended audiences, the ethos is not effective.

Logos is present in the article but is not very effective because again it only targets one of three intended audiences. Most of the author’s logos can be found at the end of his research which happen to be in the conclusions to his experiments. At the end of the first experiment in paragraphs 5-8, the author claims “those who were uninterested in the task generally performed worse” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 8). This statement proves his theory and argument and is a logical statement. He is basically saying if a person does not like the work they have to do, they will do poorly at it. The author makes it seem simple and easy to fix making it logical. The author then uses what another scientist suggests which states that “whether we find something interesting is largely a matter of whether we find it personally valuable” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 10). This claims that the audience needs to add personal value to tasks in order to perform better in them which is another logical, can-do statement. Even though the logos seems effective, O’Keefe is talking specifically about students, so it is evident that the audience is just teachers making the logos overall, ineffective.