rhetorical appeals and argument

Rhetorical Analysis: Creating an App Casebook 

Melvin E. Beavers Volume 5 Assignment Description The purpose of this assignment is to use rhetoric to think and write critically about technology and the users’ experiences with it. To do so, students will work collaboratively to determine what makes a smartphone app successful. Once they agree, each student is bound by the criteria they […]

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What Is Rhetoric? A “Choose Your Own Adventure” Primer

William Duffy Volume 5 Chapter Description Providing an introduction to rhetoric is a foundational component of most first-year writing courses.1 Discussion of rhetorical appeals, for example, is standard fair in these contexts, as are activities that ask students to develop an appreciation for rhetorical situations, audiences, purposes, and even more nuanced concepts such as kairos

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Elaborate Rhetorics

David Blakesley Volume 5 Chapter Description This essay presents a working definition of rhetoric, then explores its key terms to help you understand rhetoric’s nature as both an applied art of performance and a heuristic art of invention and creation.1 The definition also situates rhetoric in the social processes of identification and division. The definition

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Make Your “Move”: Writing in Genres

Brad Jacobson, Madelyn Pawlowski, & Christine M. Tardy Volume 4 Chapter Description When approaching new genres, students often wonder what kind of information to include and how. Rhetorical moves analysis, a type of genre analysis, offers a useful, practical approach for students to understand how writers achieve their goals in a genre through various writing

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At Work in the Archives: Place-Based Research and Writing

Lynée Lewis Gaillet & Jessica Rose Volume 4 Chapter Description This chapter outlines a plan for incorporating primary and archival research into first year writing course designs. Correlating directly with recent college initiatives and composition best practices, archival research asks students to see themselves as experts, engage in rhetorical activism, and take on college-to-career projects.

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Four Things Social Media Can Teach You about College Writing—and One Thing It Can’t

Ann N. Amicucci Volume 4 Chapter Description Many students are frequent users of social media, and it’s important to recognize the rich rhetorical activity that happens on apps like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. This chapter teaches students how to take rhetorical moves they make on social media and mimic these moves in academic writing,

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Exigency: What Makes My Message Indispensable to My Reader

Quentin Vieregge Volume 3 Chapter Description This essay defines the word exigency and explains its value as a way of gaining and holding a reader’s interest. Exigency is defined as not simply explaining why a topic matters generally, but why it should matter specifically at this time and place and for one’s intended readership. Four

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Writing in Global Contexts: Composing Usable Texts for Audiences from Different Cultures

Kirk St.Amant Volume 3 Chapter Description The international spread of online access means we live in an increasingly interconnected world. This situation means our students will likely write for audiences in different parts of the globe. Writing for such diverse audiences means addressing different contexts affecting how individuals perceive texts. Writing students can benefit from

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Constructing Scholarly Ethos in the Writing Classroom

Kathleen J. Ryan Volume 3 Chapter Description This essay offers a more robust definition of ethos than the typical definition of credibility to teach students more about ethos. I define ethos as the strategic positioning of the rhetor in relationship to the audience and/or community and then discuss four interrelated parts of ethos that can

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Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style

Craig Hulst Volume 3 Chapter Description This chapter focuses on grammar, specifically on understanding that grammar is much more than just the rules that we have been taught. Rather, grammar can be used rhetorically—with an understanding of the writing situation and making appropriate choices regarding the structure of the sentences, the use of punctuation, using

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