Purpose
Compile a SLU Writing Program textbook for ENGL 1900 from Fountainhead Press resources. The textbook should complement the course outcomes and the general course schedule.
Student Learning Outcomes
- Write and design persuasive messages that incorporate various kinds of research in order to appeal to specific rhetorical situations (i.e., purposes, audiences, and contexts).
- Compose rhetorically appropriate prose and design that meets audience expectations of style, usage, and other conventions.
- Analyze rhetorical situations and messages by using a sophisticated conceptual vocabulary.
- Incorporate rhetorically appropriate and reliable research sources into new compositions.
- Summarize, paraphrase, and quote texts accurately and fairly.
Audience
SLU undergraduate students from all majors in the arts and sciences
Context
Obviously the immediate context is Saint Louis University and the city of Saint Louis itself. It's also important to consider the departmental context. The range of ENGL 1900 instructors will be broad (from TT faculty with specialities in Rhetoric & Composition or literature to first-time instructors).
Links to Fountainhead Press Resources
Section 1: Introduction to Rhetoric
"Chapter 1: Defining Rhetoric" from Praxis: A Brief Rhetoric offers the best introduction. It begins by addressing students' typical associations with rhetoric: "mere rhetoric," trickery, or "empty verbiage"--typically in the form of a public speech. The intro tries to expand the students' concepts of rhetoric by pointing out how they themselves constantly engage in rhetorical acts. Provides brief historical context (starting with ancient Greece). My favorite feature: a list of selected definitions of rhetoric.
Cicero: "Rhetoric is 'speech designed to persuade' and 'eloquence based on the rules of art.'
Sister Miriam Joseph: Rhetoric is "the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance."
Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric is "the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents."
Section 2: Rhetorical Techniques for Invention
Credits:
Created with images by Dyroc - "wire"