The article I picked to analyze is Participation in the National School

Lunch Program: Importance of School-Level and Neighborhood Contextual

Factors by Donka M. Mirtcheva and Lisa M. Powell. This article describes
national school lunch programs, stigmas in school lunch rooms and child
nutrition. All of these things where concerns of the authors. Both authors
have achieved greatly in educational aspects. They considered to examine
certain areas of school lunch programs such as the effects of stigma,
neighborhood food environment, and demographics characteristic. This
article is informative and contains lots of facts that are backed up properly.
The audience consisted from school affiliated politicians to parents
concerned of school lunch programs. This research had a great deal of time
for it to gather information and develop as a research project. I will show my
analysis of the article in parts starting from the abstract, moving on to the
article which is cut into introduction, methods, results, discussion, and
conclusion.
The abstract just sums up everything the authors did in their research
and what they were researching. This is a great way to give readers a small
glimpse into what the article goes into detail about. Straight away it starts
showcasing special vocabulary (lexis), and big important organizations. The
lexis vocabulary is later explained which helps the reader understand the
article better. The authors mention powerful organizations that are relevant
to their research. This use of lexis, and mention of organizations pertaining
to their research helps greatly to build their credibility. Also their structure

makes it easy for the reader to grasp the concept of the article. They
describe their method of gathering information in some detail. This method
is covered in greater detail later on for better explanation for the reader. The
abstract ends with a small summary of the conclusion. Thus ends the
glimpse of the article.
The article then moves on to describe the facts they have gathered
about the school lunch programs and who is participating in it. They also
comment on what hasnt been researched in the past years. This gives hints
on the exigences of the article. Meaning why the authors wrote what they
wrote about their research. The authors in the introduction are persistent on
siting their information. This is a great way they build their credibility. The
fact that most of their citations makes them credible. The Government is
deemed to be reliable. Reasons being that they have immense departments
to back up any of the information they put out. Also a lot of people depend
on the government for information, so there is great motive to be reliable.
Sense the authors decided to site government entities, it makes them
reliable sources. The information given in the introduction is structured in a
stair case kind of structure. For the most part the authors give information to
the reader that is then explained, then they introduce more information
simultaneously interconnecting them together and then moving on to the
next step. The structure of the information allows a good smooth flow of
information for reading.

Methods is the third section of the article. The article takes a small shift
in change at this particular moment. At this time they start to describe the
ways they extracted data. The authors described the data extraction in a
detailed but smooth way. They explained the different groups, as well as the
description of the groups life style. This makes the reading easy to read and
understand do to the fact that they explain in some detail. They also provide
the establishments that support them, All aspects of this study were
approved by the University of Illinois at Chicago Human Subjects Institutional
Review Board. This positively affects the authors Ethos in that a University
only approves trustworthy sources. There for the authors are credible. Close
to the end they introduce a formula which they compose. This is also
explained in detail to clear any miscommunications. This formula was used
to show the gathered information and the results would explain what is going
on in school lunch programs. This is later explained. This information was
structured like a wall. Brick by brick. They explained their methods of
research then they set it down then they explained the different categories
and then laid it on top of the first block, so on so forth. This helps the reader
to understand the information before they move on forward.
Results for the most part were charts of data, most of which were selfexplanatory. There was a few paragraphs, which just to explain the data
shown on the data tables. The shortage of text is effective. Less text helps
the reader. If there was a lot of text the reader would feel bombarded and
would get confused. It was a good authors choice to keep the word count

low in this section. The discussion part of the article states the readers
findings and how they relate to the beliefs of the stigmas. This is partly
where the authoresss intentions of writing the piece comes into play. The
research results where the reasons why the authors were writing about it.
They also mention the limitations they had on data collection. This
negatively affects their data slightly. In small words they state they cant
gather every single little detail. Although they had limitation they still could
prove their point which was never researched before making them credible
for there is no one else to tell them they are wrong. They then move on to
conclude with policy implications. They explain what was done in school
lunch programs with what their research resulted in. This gives the reader a
result, a reason for why it was important to read the article.
The author was greatly affective at achieving their goal in relation to
the audience. They greatly explained any information they gave out, and
properly cited it as well. Their ethos and logos was a great strength in this
article due to great structure, as well as extensive explanations of reasoning
and choice making. The only weakness I would have seen is the appealing to
the readers emotions. The article was in fact informational. On the other
hand the content of the article was good enough to at least stir some
emotions. For the most part the article was written in a great caliber, and
was easy to understand. They used their rhetorical strategies effectively to
make typically anyone able to read and understand their purpose behind
their writing.