RHE 398T: Teaching First-Year Writing, Theory and Practice

The goal of 309K is to teach students the principles of rhetoric and writing through the lens of a particular instructor-chosen topic. To achieve that goal, each 309K will instruct students to:

- identify and analyze context
- identify a text’s purpose
- analyze the various ways a text appeals to its specific audience
- examine how a text contributes to an ongoing conversation or conversations
- summarize multiple perspectives fairly
- assess the credibility of sources, including Internet sources
- think critically—invent, organize, and revise college-level thinking
- read and write well-researched, college-level papers

Though RHE 309K is organized around a particular topic, it is first and foremost a course in rhetoric. Rhetoric is a lens that can be used to analyze any topic, and RHE 309K should call attention both to rhetoric as a lens (looking "at" rhetoric) and a topic viewed through the lens (looking "through" rhetoric). The course is not intended to grant students mastery over a topic or over rhetoric itself, but rather to place students in an ongoing conversation about a particular topic and to give them the opportunity and the skills to listen, to analyze, and to participate in this conversation.

Topics will vary immensely from class to class (a few recent examples include gossip, desire, eating, spying, bad advice, the body, murder, and “the road trip”). Instructors may select readings from an array of genres, including (but not limited to) essays and articles, films, letters to the editor, legal documents, chapters of books, plays, reviews, contemporary music, blogs, wikis, and other web-based genres. Selections should be sufficiently varied to allow representation and analysis of multiple perspectives. Instructors should design course units to meet rhetorical goals, rather than topic-based goals.

Textbooks

All sections of RHE 309K require a rhetoric textbook and handbook. If you prefer to compile your own packet of readings, please email your list of proposed readings to the Associate Chair or bring it by Parlin 3 for departmental approval.

The texts below have been used successfully in RHE 309K. Examination copies of these and other texts are available in the DRW AD office (Parlin 3C). You are free to use any books that fulfill the criteria outlined above.

Rhetorics

- A Rhetoric of Argument, Fahnestock and Secor
- Writing Arguments, John Ramage, John Bean, and June Johnson
- Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy, Donald Lazere
- Critical Situations, Sharon Crowley and Michael Stancliff
- Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Browne and Keeley
- Having Your Say: Reading and Writing Public Arguments, Charney and Neuwirth
- Elements of Reasoning, Corbett and Eberly
- Elements of Persuasion, Covino
- Good Reasons, Faigley and Selzer
- They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Graff and Birkenstein
- Everything’s an Argument, Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz
- Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students by Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee
- Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers by Jeffrey Walker and Mark Longaker
Handbooks (the following handbooks also provide tools and terms for rhetorical analysis)

- Brief Penguin Handbook, Faigley
- SF Express, Ruszkiewicz, Friend, and Hairston
- Easy Writer, Andrea Lusford
- The Little Seagull Handbook by Richard Bullock and Francine Weinberg

- Course Description
- Teacher Development and Marketability
- Course Paradigms