In this learning area, you will learn how to develop an argumentative essay and stronger critical thinking skills. This learning area will help you develop your arguments, understand your audience, evaluate source material, approach arguments rhetorically, and avoid logical fallacies. Here, you’ll also learn about evaluating other arguments and creating digital writing projects related to your argument.

The authors of Chinese Rhetoric and Writing offer a response to the argument that Chinese students' academic writing in English is influenced by "culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate." Noting that this argument draws from "an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing," they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for "a radical reassessment of what English is in today's world." The result is a book that provides teachers of writing, and in particular those involved in the teaching of English academic writing to Chinese students, an introduction to key stages in the development of Chinese rhetoric, a wide-ranging field with a history of several thousand years. Understanding this important rhetorical tradition provides a strong foundation for assessing and responding to the writing of this growing group of students.

"This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion throughAnalyzing persuasive texts and speechesCreating persuasive texts and speechesThrough class discussions, presentations, and written Assignments and Labs, you will get to practice your own rhetorical prowess. Through the readings, you'll also learn some ways to make yourself a more efficient reader, as you turn your analytical skills on the texts themselves. This combination of reading, speaking, and writing will help you succeed in:learningto read and think criticallytechniques of rhetorical analysistechniques of argumentto enhance your written and oral discourse with appropriate figures of speechsome techniques of oral presentation and the use of visual aids and visual rhetoric."

EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to show their learning while also practicing rhetorical awareness techniques for future writing situations.

This course promotes clear and effective communication by sharpening critical thinking and writing skills. The first unit is designed to change the way in which students think about writing--as a conversation rather than a solitary act. The second unit focuses on academic writing and explores the PWR-Writing or Power-Writing Method (PWR Pre-Write, Write, Revise). The remaining units will focus on the minutiae of good writing practices, from style to citation methodology. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: Demonstrate mastery of principles of grammar, usage, mechanics, and sentence structure. Identify the thesis in another individual's essay. Develop a thesis statement, structure it in an introductory paragraph, and support it with the body of the essay. Organize ideas logically within an essay, deploying adequate transitional devices to ensure coherence, flow, and focus. Differentiate between rhetorical strategies and write with an awareness of rhetorical technique and audience. Differentiate between tones and write with an awareness of how tone affects the audience's experience. Demonstrate critical and analytical thinking for reading and writing purposes. Quote, paraphrase, and document the work of others. Write sentences that vary in length and structure. (English 001)

The reason why Randall Fallows wrote Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis is simple; to help give students a better understanding of how to discover, develop, and revise an analytical essay. Here is how his 5 chapter book goes about doing just that:The first two chapters focus on the nature of an analysis and what’s involved in writing an analytical essay. First, Randall shows that analysis consists of a balance of assertions (statements which present their viewpoints or launch an exploration of their concerns), examples (specific passages/scenes/events which inspire these views), explanations (statements that reveal how the examples support the assertions), and significance (statements which reveal the importance of their study to personal and/or cultural issues).After showing why each feature should be present throughout an essay, he reveals how to ”set the stage“ for producing one of their own. He first helps students to evaluate their own views on a subject and to examine how these views emerge from their own experiences, values and judgments. He, then, shows them how to research what others have said about the subject and provides suggestions for evaluating and incorporating this research into their own perspectives.Finally, Randall discusses the nature of writing, not as a linear procedure, but as a recursive process where the discovery and clarification of a concept occur simultaneously.The remaining three chapters reveal more specific advice on how to develop an analytical essay.Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis by Randall Fallows is a great text to prepare any student to write analytical essays for the argument and persuasion courses.

Formulating, organizing, and presenting ideas clearly in writing. Reviews basic principles of rhetoric. Focuses on development of a topic, thesis, choice of appropriate vocabulary, and sentence structure to achieve purpose. Develops idiomatic prose style. Gives attention to grammar and vocabulary usage. Special focus on strengthening skills of bilingual students. Successful completion satisfies Phase I of the Writing Requirement. The purpose of this course is to develop your writing skills so that you can feel confident writing the essays, term papers, reports, and exams you will have to produce during your career here at MIT. We will read and analyze samples of expository writing, do some work on vocabulary development, and concentrate on developing your ability to write clear, accurate, sophisticated prose. We will also deal with the grammar and mechanical problems you may have trouble with.

The First Year Writing Course was developed through the Ohio Department of Higher Education OER Innovation Grant. The course is part of the Ohio Transfer Module and is also named TME001. This work was completed and the course was posted in September 2018. For more information about credit transfer between Ohio colleges and universities, please visit: www.ohiohighered.org/transfer.Team LeadRachel Brooks-Pannell                       Columbus State Community CollegeContent ContributorsCatherine Braun                                  Ohio State UniversityMartin Brick                                         Ohio Dominican UniversityPeter Landino                                      Terra State Community CollegeBrian Leingang                                    Edison State Community CollegeBonnie Proudfoot                                Hocking CollegeJason Reynolds                                  Southern State Community CollegeMarie Stokes                                       Stark State CollegeLibrarianKatie Foran-Mulcahy                           University of Cincinnati Clermont CollegeReview TeamAnna Bogen                                        Marion Technical CollegeSteven Mohr                                       Terra State Community CollegeKelsey Squire                                      Ohio Dominican University                                     

How to Use This GuideThis document is intended to highlight resources available to address the resource goal of Understanding Rhetorical Situations in a First-Year Writing Course. All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System via hyperlink.

This textbook guides students through rhetorical and assignment analysis, the writing process, researching, citing, rhetorical modes, and critical reading. Guided by Oregon's statewide college writing outcomes, this book collects previously published articles, essays, and chapters released under Creative Commons licenses into one free textbook available for online access or print-on-demand.

""Reading Poetry" has several aims: primarily, to increase the ways you can become more engaged and curious readers of poetry; to increase your confidence as writers thinking about literary texts; and to provide you with the language for literary description. The course is not designed as a historical survey course but rather as an introductory approach to poetry from various directions -- as public or private utterances; as arranged imaginative shapes; and as psychological worlds, for example. One perspective offered is that poetry offers intellectual, moral and linguistic pleasures as well as difficulties to our private lives as readers and to our public lives as writers. Expect to hear and read poems aloud and to memorize lines; the class format will be group discussion, occasional lecture."

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This course specifically focuses on the ways that scientists use various methods of persuasion in the construction of scientific knowledge.

This course is an introduction to the theory, the practice, and the implications (both social and ethical) of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This semester, many of your skills will have the opportunity to be deepened by practice, including your analytical and critical thinking skills, your persuasive writing skills, and your oral presentation skills. In this course you will act as both a rhetor (a person who uses rhetoric) and as a rhetorical critic (one who studies the art of rhetoric). Both write to persuade; both ask and answer important questions. Always one of their goals is to create new knowledge for all of us, so no endeavor in this class is a "mere exercise."

In the Rhetorical Styles area of the Excelsior OWL, you’ll learn about different rhetorical styles or, essentially, different strategies for developing your essays and other writing assignments. These basic strategies are not all encompassing but will provide you with a foundation and a flexibility to help you as you engage in writing assignments in your introductory writing classes and beyond.

Designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as a practical guide for students struggling to bring their writing up to the level expected of them by their professors and instructors.

The first in a two-volume set, A Rhetoric of Literate Action is written for "the experienced writer with a substantial repertoire of skills, [who] now would find it useful to think in more fundamental strategic terms about what they want their texts to accomplish, what form the texts might take, how to develop specific contents, and how to arrange the work of writing." The reader is offered a framework for identifying and understanding the situations writing comes out of and is directed toward; a consideration of how a text works to transform a situation and achieve the writer's motives; and advice on how to bring the text to completion and "how to manage the work and one's own emotions and energies so as to accomplish the work most effectively."

The second in a two-volume set, A Theory of Literate Action draws on work from the social sciences—and in particular sociocultural psychology, phenomenological sociology, and the pragmatic tradition of social science—to "reconceive rhetoric fundamentally around the problems of written communication rather than around rhetoric's founding concerns of high stakes, agonistic, oral public persuasion" (p. 3). An expression of more than a quarter-century of reflection and scholarly inquiry, this volume represents a significant contribution to contemporary rhetorical theory.

This course seeks to provide a supportive context for students to grow significantly as writers by discovering and engaging with issues that matter to them. Writing on social and ethical issues, we can see ourselves within a tradition of authors such as Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, George Orwell, Rachel Carson, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., who have used the power of the pen to inspire social change.

This a text that provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading, and critical thinking, and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition.