Assignment #2 Draft

College Readiness after Covid

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 created a huge transformation throughout the globe, including towards millions of students, impacting their overall higher education. With over 13,000 institutions shifting towards online education, and some using a mix of online and in-person classes, this change not only impacted their studies, but as well as their feelings, and overall goals and achievements. Going from virtual-mode to in person mode,  all while entering a greater level of education was a dramatic change for students. In this article we will analyze two different sources regarding this subject: How Has COVID Affected College Students? by Jane Nam, and College Preparedness: Recovering from the Pandemic by Suzzane Shafer, and discuss the use of ethos, pathos and logos, in order to answer the question “how does the mode of instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic impact highschool graduates’ future academic performance and ability to adapt to the demand of higher education?”. 

We will first begin to discuss how the two articles use ethos in order to gain credibility as well as their audiences’ trust. In the article How Has COVID Affected College Students? by Jane Nam, Nam uses ethos by using multiple references and sources such as surveys, studies, and data from well known, credible, institutions such as BestColleges, CollegeBoard, etc. We can see the use of these references where it states “According to a BestColleges survey from 2021, over 9 in 10 college students reported having experienced negative mental health impacts due to COVID-19-related circumstances. Some of these factors included struggles with isolation, anxiety, and lack of focus”, as well as “A 2022 study found that students identified the transition to remote learning as a significant source of stress. This was not only due to social isolation necessitated by the pandemic. Learning from home also meant a loss of academic resources (e.g., internet access, advisors) as well as an increase in distractions (e.g., caring for siblings)”. The use of these sources automatically gives Nam great credibility due to them already being credible as is. This allows the reader to gain trust within this article, which naturally allows the Nam to persuade the reader. In comparison, in the article College Preparedness: Recovering from the Pandemic by Suzzane Shafer, Shafer also uses the rhetorical strategy ethos through citing reliable sources to strengthen their argument, as well as providing facts and data. We can see the data where Shafer states “A Student Voice survey of 2,000 college students from 108 institutions found that:Forty-seven percent of students rated the value of their education during the 2020–21 school year as fair or poor. More than half (52 percent) said they learned less that year compared to pre-COVID years. Fifty-eight percent of first-year college students reported feeling very or somewhat unprepared for college.” This data makes Shafer’s argument stronger, allowing the reader to gain trust. When we take a look at both uses of ethos, we can see that both strategies are effective in persuading the reader. Giving the idea that the transition from Highschool to college was harder than usual for students, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Moving on to the next rhetorical strategy pathos, the use of emotion in order to allow the audience to relate or feel sympathy, both authors do a great job at achieving this as well. Looking back at the article How Has COVID Affected College Students?, Nam appeals to readers’ emotions by sharing personal stories and anecdotes. They describe the struggles of individual students, such as the story of the student who excelled in math prior to the pandemic but now feels lost and overwhelmed in a college-level calculus class. “A new college student at the University of Texas recounted her struggle . She excelled in math prior to the pandemic, but by a slim margin failed the math placement exam that would have put her in calculus as a freshman.”Additionally, Nam highlights the emotional toll on students’ mental health and well-being, mentioning concerns about loneliness, anxiety, and impaired social-emotional development. “More than 35 percent of parents are very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health and over half of parents (61%) reported their child’s social-emotional development was impaired by the pandemic.” These emotional situations and descriptions evoke empathy from the audience and make the challenges faced by students more relatable and impactful, strengthening the overall argument. 

We will now move on to the last rhetorical strategy known as logos, the act of appealing to the logic of the reader. Both authors do an excellent job at fulfilling the logos strategy, as they both provide useful and on-topic statistics to back up their point of views. In the article How Has COVID Affected College Students?, Nam presents evidence of the learning loss experienced by high school students during the pandemic, including the average months of instruction lost in various subjects. “The result: High school students lost on average the equivalent of 3.4 months of instruction in reading, 3.3 months in math, 3.1 months in science, and 2.3 months in English.” In the article College Preparedness: Recovering from the Pandemic by Suzzane Shafer, Shafer uses logos by also using statistics to back up claims, as well as providing charts and graphs allowing the content to be more accessible and influential. We can see this in the quotes  “By fall 2020, 44% of institutions were either fully or primarily online, 21% were hybrid, and only 27% used fully or primarily in-person instruction.” as well as “The COVID-19 pandemic amplified and quickened certain pre-existing trends in higher education. Enrollment numbers, for example, had already been steadily declining for the past few decades prior to the pandemic.” 

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Works cited