Rhetoric

Description

This course has two primary goals: to strengthen students' essay
writing skills and to give students a strong foundation in the
classical study of argument.

We'll use a genre-based approach to review the foundations of good
writing. This portion of the course will be based on readings in The
Prose Reader. In addition, we will use A Rhetoric of Argument to study
the elements of argument, those characteristics that make an argument
persuasive. Students will read and analyze arguments by other writers,
including editorials and advertisements from newspapers and magazines.
Students will then apply the tools they've learned in writing their
own arguments.

From this course, students should be more astute in responding to
arguments and more skilled in writing their own arguments. Just as
importantly, students' writing will be strengthened. In some sense,
any essay is an argument, persuading the audience of the student's
thesis statement. We'll focus on strengthening the student's basic
writing skills (thesis statement, paragraph formation,
introduction/conclusion) and give the students tools for making each
essay they write - for any course - a persuasive one.

 

Prerequisite: Must be 14 years old.

Texts:

A Rhetoric of Argument: A Text and Reader, 3rd edition, by Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor. Published by McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0072938234.

The Prose Reader: Essays for Thinking, Reading, and Writing, 7th
edition, by Flachmann and Flachmann. Published by Pearson Prentice
Hall. ISBN 0131850164.

Both texts are available at Amazon, as well as used book sites such as AbeBooks. Used copies, if the correct edition, are fine. These are the same texts I've used in past years, so you may also be able to get it from someone who took Composition & Rhetoric in past years.

Tutor: Megan Swartz