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

RHE 309S: Critical Reading and Persuasive Writing, is a course in argumentation designed for students who have earned credit by examination for RHE 306. Like RHE 306, RHE 309S teaches students how to analyze and write arguments. It does this, however, specifically through the analysis and production of arguments on contemporary civic or public issues. In doing so, RHE 309S introduces students to rhetoric as a civic art and prepares them to participate in a public sphere, both as a critical citizen-judge of arguments and texts in circulation and as a rhetor-advocate of particular positions, generating new arguments and contributing to the “conversation” or debate.

The aims of RHE 309S are to teach students to:

• Analyze issues and arguments, and the rhetorical situations (or public spheres) in which they are embedded

• Understand public writing

• Read texts and images critically

• Discover, evaluate, construct, and organize effective, original arguments

• Conduct research, use it effectively in argumentation, and document sources properly

• Produce a clear and supple style that is adapted to particular rhetorical situations

• Edit and proofread their own and others’ prose

While RHE 309S resembles RHE 306, it differs in [a] its emphasis on civic or public discourse, and [b] a higher level of challenge. It offers the more advanced student special opportunities to develop his or her talents as an analyst and producer of public discourse.

- Course Requirements
- Teacher Development and Marketability
- Course Paradigms