Text A: What makes Chinese students so successful by international standards?

Text B: ![[UWC/Eng/HW/_resources/Pasted image 20241203205613.png]]

Part 1: Text Analysis

Understanding and Interpretation

Text A is an opinion piece issued on The Conversation, a non-official and non-profit platform from US. The intended audience includes educational scholars and people who are interested in education and China. The article mainly counters the common perception that Chinese education lacks innovation and encourages the Western world to re-examine and even learn from the Chinese education system. The authors used credible ethos, plausible logos, and objective language to convince the readers.

Text B is a photo from Project 562, a photo-essay by Matika Wilbur. Photographers, Native Americans and people who are interested in photography or native culture may be attracted by this text. The text’s purpose is to unveil the beauty of Native culture and expose its vitality to the world to counter the false stereotype, so that people are able to have a better understanding of the native American’s identity and their culture. To meet this goal, she applied calm color palette, framing and careful subject selection.

Analysis and Evaluation

Text A

The headline use of ‘what’ evokes curiosity from readers, encouraging them to read the piece. This attracts readers to read the piece in order to be convinced.

The tone is rather formal and objective, which contributes to the ethos of the text and therefore creates a sense of profession to the readers.

The structure of the text is that it presents a misconception (suppose Chinese education system is ‘passive and rote’), counters it with evidence of innovation, and call for action to learn from Chinese education system’s principles. This logical flow, grounded in credible research, persuades readers to reconsider their views effectively.

The use of quotations from experts and research appeal logos served as evidence. In the text, the authors quoted from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to back the observation of China producing ‘an extremely skilled and creative workforce’, while referring the PISA ranking to clarify the observation from quantitative perspective. These references enhance credibility.

Text B

By using calm color pallete, the author was able to transmit a sense of hope and peace to audience, as the pinkish gray and the orange of the dawn symbolized the strength of the Native Americans.

Wilbur applies expansive framing and places the subjects within a vast natural landscape, which clearly emphasizes the harmony between nature and human from Native American culture.

The balanced composition (placing half human half nature) with horizontal lines create a sense of stableness to the audience, serve as metaphor to convey harmony between human and nature.

The caption content provides context for the picture. It provides more information about the subjects, indicating the character of the elder of being a ‘woman nation-builder’. Together with the visual, the caption leaves strong impression to the reader with more details, adding realism.

Part 2: Comparative Analysis (Criterion A and B)

Both texts demonstrate a sense of reality, with the photo through visual elements while the opinion piece through logics.

The photo as medium(Text B) is strong with pathos, with rather sufficient ethos, though lack of logos. The photo conveys strong feelings through visual devices. For example, the use of calm color pallete evokes peace and hope, while the composition shows stability. Pathos engaged the audience more with the Native American culture. Additionally, the author appeals to ethos by using caption content to describe the presented elder as ‘former Tribal senator’, ‘Native American arts gallery owner’, etc. which suggest the chosen subject is representative to native culture to enhance credibility. However, the photo lacks logos, as the medium is limited to present logical argument or data.

In contrast, the opinion piece (Text A) demonstrates a strong sense of ethos and logos, but lacks pathos. By introducing the authors’ professor titles and citing academic or reputable sources to serve as evidence, the piece becomes credible and appeals to ethos effectively. In addition to ethos, the logical structure, which addresses misconceptions, presents evidence, and calls for adopting Chinese educational principles, effectively engages and persuades readers with solid evidence. Nevertheless, the piece is not effective in appealing to pathos. The question in the piece title evokes curiosity from readers to attract reading, but it does not contribute to persuation directly.

While Text A relies heavily on ethos and logos through expert quotations and statistical data, Text B appeals to pathos through its visual elements to create an emotional connection with the audience. I believe Text A is more powerful, because its integration of ethos and logos is more effective than visual effects that merely evoke emotion in text B.

Part 3: Critical Reflection (Criterion A)

Both text address stereotypes in different cultural context. To deal with false perception, Text A presents the unique characteristics of Chinese education, while Text B conveys emotion to reveal the beauty and vitality of Native culture. However, both text have potential issues in their uses of techniques.

For text A, the evidence seems credible at first glance, but is actually problematic. The two pinciples (“循序渐进” and “厚积薄发”) mentioned by the authors are not ‘central’. A profound Chinese reader may suspect the use of these two concepts to justify the exam-driven education system. In addition, the examples given to demonstrate the education system promotes ‘innovation or creativity’ only include the abundance of engineers, but lacks of entrepreneur and inventor. Moreover, the evidence of using PISA ranking to show Chinese students’ competence with others is one-sided. Even though the ranking system is widely accepted, the ranking only focuses on ‘reading, mathematics and science’, rather than other essential skills, like critical thinking, which readers with education profession may argue. Therefore, the evidence presents selective bias and are not able to fully convince all the readers.

In Text B, there are also issues with its appeals to ethos and pathos. Even though Matika Wilbur is a Native American herself and every photo was taken with subjects’ consent, Native Americans may find it questionable if her narrative is representative to the whole groups when different tribes are present in her photo essay. In addition, audience who are skilled photographers may find the pathos of the photos not evocative, as the tweak in lighting and color palletes make the photos reduce in realism. Ultimately, the Matika Wilbur’s work is questionable for its representativeness and photo adjustment, which thus lower its evocativeness.