The Girl Who Silenced the World

Argument Analysis

Complete the following using complete sentences and text evidence to support your thinking. Note the paragraph in parentheses
where appropriate.

Question Text evidence to support your ideas

What is Severn Suzuki’s claim?
Severn Suzuki claims that adults
must change how they act toward
the environment.
“We’ve raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles to tell
you adults you must change your ways.” (Paragraph 1)
“All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we
want and all the solutions.” “If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking
it.” (Paragraph 3)
“We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing
up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying ‘Everything is
going to be all right, it’s not the end of the world, and we are doing the best we
can’. “(Paragraph 6)

What are her reasons? a) She talks about how depending on where you are born, you can have
Her reasons are: enough to eat or not, and adults who are capable of doing something
a) Children starving and about it don’t.
poverty b) She explains how human actions affect animals' and plants’ habitats
b) Animals and plants are dying and make life impossible for them. They die but are not able to create
c) The ozone layer is destroyed new members of their species. They end up extinguished.
d) We waste a lot of c) She says that the ozone layer is being destroyed and it causes her to be
contaminants afraid of the sun and its rays.
e) Adults’ hypocrisy d) She talks against the waste that countries like Canada create without
thinking about the impact that it makes on the planet.

What specific evidence does she
use to support her reasons?
a) The environment is
degrading
b) Pollution
Which paragraph do you consider
most effective for supporting her
claim? Write the first sentence of
the paragraph.
I think paragraph 5 is more
complete as she uses both
evidence and her opinion.
The Girl Who Silenced the World
Argument Analysis
e) Adults tell kids to take care of our planet but then they don’t follow
their own advice.
a) “I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my Dad until, just a
few years ago, we found a fish full of cancers. And now we hear of
animals and plants going extinct every day, vanishing forever.”
(Paragraph 2)
“You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don’t
know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t
know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring
back the forest that once grew where there is now a desert.”
(Paragraph 3)
b) “I am afraid to go out in the sun now, because of the holes in our
ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air, because I don’t know what
chemicals are in it.” (Paragraph 2)
“In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away,
buy and throw away, buy and throw away…” (Paragraph 5)
“In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid of telling the
world how I feel.”

What ideas did she offer in the
first paragraph that she included
in her conclusion?
She talked about how our way of
acting now impacts our future.
What rhetorical appeals did she
use? Provide specific examples.
She used Logos, Pathos, and Ethos
Did she write a strong argument?
Why or why not? Include your
ideas about how her word choice
affected her argument.
The Girl Who Silenced the World
Argument Analysis
“We’ve raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles
to tell you adults you must change your ways.” (Paragraph 1)
“ You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in. Parents
should be able to comfort their children by saying ‘Everything is going to
be all right, it’s not the end of the world, and we are doing the best we
can’.” (Conclusion)
Logos → “And you can’t bring back the forest that once grew where there is
now a desert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.”
(Paragraph 3)
Pathos → Two days ago, here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent time
with some children living on the streets. (Paragraph 5)
Ethos → I am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals
are in it. (2)
She wrote a strong argument because she gave her opinion in a way that
appealed to people’s emotions and sense of logic. She also stated her
arguments in a clear
way and spoke directly to the people she wanted to talk to, by using the
pronoun “you”, she made sure that the listeners were paying attention to her
and thinking about what she was saying.
Also, by using recent news about kids, animals, ecosystems, etc. She showed
that both she and the other members of E.C.O. are really worried about this
issue and have done their research to bring their claim and ask for help from
the U.N., proving to all of them how this concerns people of all ages, mostly
those who want to live in a healthy future.