Rhetoric refers to the study, uses, and effects
of spoken, written, and visual language.
Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies
Current and Emerging Values of the
Lower Division Writing Program:
Rhetoric
Collaboration
Technology
We are a program.
•
•
We deliver goals and instruction
consistently across multiple sections.
We value instructors’ innovative
instances of our goals and assignments.
We communicate as a program.
• We use Blackboard to present course materials and
communicate with our students.
We communicate as a program.
• We use Blackboard to communicate with our program.
Our program consists of two courses.
• RWS 100 and 101: The Rhetoric of Written Argument
Our program consists of two courses.
• RWS 200: The Rhetoric of Written Argument in Context
We know what we teach—the actions
listed in our learning outcomes.
In RWS 100, students:
1.
construct an account of an author’s
project and argument; translate an
argument into their own words;
2.
construct an account of an author’s
project and argument and carry out small,
focused research tasks to find
information that helps clarify, illustrate,
extend or complicate that argument; use
appropriate reference materials, including
a dictionary, in order to clarify their
understanding of an argument;
3.
4.
construct an account of two authors’
projects and arguments and explain
rhetorical strategies that these authors—
and by extension other writers—use to
engage readers in thinking about their
arguments;
construct an account of two author’s
projects and arguments in order to use
concepts from one argument as a
framework for understanding and writing
about another.
In RWS 200, students:
1.
construct an account of an argument and identify
elements of context embedded in it, the clues that
show what the argument is responding to--both in
the sense of what has come before it and in the
sense that it is written for an audience in a
particular time and place; examine a writer’s
language in relation to audience, context and
community;
2.
follow avenues of investigation that are opened by
noticing elements of context; research those
elements and show how one's understanding of
the argument is developed, changed, or evolved
by looking into its context;
3.
given the common concerns of two or more
arguments, discuss how the claims of these
arguments modify, complicate or qualify one
another;
4.
consider their contemporary, current life as the
context within which they are reading the
arguments assigned in the class; position
themselves in relation to these arguments and
additional ones they have researched in order to
make an argument; draw on available key terms,
concepts or frameworks of analysis to help shape
the argument.
Building on RWS 100, 200 introduces the
concept of Context.
Context: The larger textual and cultural
environment in which specific rhetorical acts
take place
Example text: MLK Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
Context: References to a
particular audience Responding to a
statement by eight
Alabama clergymen.
Context: References to past
conversations about nonviolent protest - Socrates
and Ghandi
Context: References to current writing
environment – author’s location in
jail as a result of involvement with
lunch counter sit-ins
We encourage innovative
implementations of these outcomes.
RWS 200 Words and Images Sequence, Spring 2006
Paper 1: Articulating an Argument and What It Reveals About Its Context
For this project:
Conduct a survey of friends, family, and classmates to learn about assumptions you (and people
like you) have about photography—we will work on this part as a separate class assignment.
Construct for an audience that has not read John Berger’s essay, “Appearances,” an account of
his project and argument. You should provide a sense of what the issues are for him, the
assumptions that he comes to reject, and how he looks at photographs that matter to him.
Identify for your reader some clues about the context in which the piece was written—things that
show it was written in a particular time and place that is somewhat distant from us.
Finally, assign significance to the piece by suggesting, in light of the survey that you conducted,
why Berger should be read at this point in time, in our own context.
We encourage innovative
implementations of these outcomes.
RWS 200 Rereading America Sequence, Spring 2006
Paper 1: Articulating an Argument and What It Reveals About Its Context
Project # 1 consists of a written paper and a power point presentation, using one of the texts
from our course readings (Barber, Steinhorn & Brown, Medved, Gitlin, Wynter).
Construct for an audience that has not read the text an account of the author’s project and
argument.
Provide information for one of the following context categories: the author’s life and works, the
context of publication, the larger conversation, and the author’s purpose (political goals).
Using the information from the written paper, each group member makes two PowerPoint slides:
one that presents the information and one that provides an explanation of how his/her particular
area of context affects the reader’s understanding of the overall text.
We articulate the goals for each:
• Class Session
• Assignment
• Writing Prompt
We talk about professional and student
writing in the same way—rhetorically.
• We talk about what sentences, paragraphs, images,
and texts do for readers.
Showing that
this claim really
is in the text,
and why E.
makes it.
An important part of Ehrenreich’s
argument is that the poor are invisible
to affluent people. She suggests that
the affluent “are less and less likely
to share public spaces and services with
the poor,” that political parties are
unwilling to “acknowledge that low-wage
work doesn’t lift people out of poverty”
(217) and that media attention focuses
more on “occasional success stories”
than on the rising numbers of poor and
hungry people (218). The fact that the
poor are invisible contributes to the
lack of attention that the problem of
low wages is getting.
Writer telling reader
one piece of E.’s
argument, one
claim.
Explaining why the
“invisibility claim”
is significant
We value criteria-based evaluation of
papers.
• We distribute criteria for evaluation together with each
prompt.
RWS 100 Economics and Justice Sequence, Fall 2005
Project #4
James C. Scott’s “Behind the Official Story” makes an argument about how to
research and analyze relations of power. His text provides an opportunity to
explore Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed as a research project. Looking at
Ehrenreich through Scott’s terminology, make an argument about her perspective
on economic power relations.
Successful papers will:
1. Introduce the project of examining Ehrenreich through Scott
2. Give a reader unfamiliar with the text a thumbnail sketch of Scott’s argument
3. Give a reader unfamiliar with the text a thumbnail sketch of Ehrenreich’s research
project
4. Discuss specific passages in Ehrenreich by using terminology from Scott
5. Make an argument about Ehrenreich as a book concerned with economic power
relations
6. Manage quotations well, effectively commenting on what the quoted material is
doing (reporting, interpreting, analyzing, etc.) and what readers ought to notice in
it.
7. Conclude by showing the significance of this work for us as citizens and as
writers.
We value criteria-based evaluation of
papers.
• We use these criteria to comment on papers and show
students how we arrive at their grades.
Introduce the project of examining Ehrenreich through Scott
You have done a wonderful job of articulating your project—looking at Ehrenreich’s
book through Scott’s terminology. I’m especially impressed by your sentence announcing
that Ehrenreich’s work illustrates Scott’s argument for a new type of social science.
Give a reader unfamiliar with the text a thumbnail sketch of Scott’s argument
The paragraph in which you do this weaves together a quick series of quotations from
Scott. You’ve selected key passages—the ones in which Scott defines terms—but I’d
like to see an account in your own words of Scott’s argument. You’re almost there, since
you’ve zeroed in on the places where he gives us key concepts.
Give a reader unfamiliar with the text a thumbnail sketch of Ehrenreich’s research project
I’d say that you did this better in the first paper of the semester. Why not use some of
that strong material here, and make sure that a reader can tell exactly what Ehrenreich
sets out to do in her research? I think this will only take a couple more sentences. When
you add that material, you’ll then have a very long opening paragraph, and you’ll need to
decide whether to devote a separate paragraph to describing Ehrenreich’s project.
We value collaboration.
• Collaborative Teaching
Innovations in the program have come out of collaborative teaching.
We value collaboration.
• Collaborative Writing
RWS 200 Rereading America
Sequence, Fall 2005
Paper 4: Making an argument
in relation to ongoing research
and discussion.
Using the readings by D’Souza,
Hertsgaard, Mosley, and Williams
from Rereading America as the
contextual framework, each
group will write one formal paper
approximately 6 pages long that
argues a position or positions
regarding America’s role in the
world.
We show students how to be apprentices to the kinds of
writing they’re reading in the class.
Published Author Mary Kaldor:
In this essay, I shall distinguish between
the different types of armed forces that are
emerging in the post-Cold War world . . .
and discuss how they are loosely
associated with different modes of state
transformation and different forms of
warfare . . . . The point is to provide a
schematic account of what is happening in
the field of warfare . . . . I shall suggest that
the emphasis that has been increasingly
accorded to international law, particularly
humanitarian law, offers a possible way
forward. (270)
RWS Learning Outcome: Use metadiscourse to signal the project
of a paper and guide a reader from one idea to the next.
We show students how to be apprentices to the kinds of
writing they’re reading in the class.
SDSU Student Tyler Stevens:
In this paper I will assess O’Brien’s
story and Kaldor’s speech, and show how
war inevitably affects many more people
besides the soldiers that are fighting in it.
I will also point out each author’s
rhetorical strategies, hoping to distinguish
which author is more effective in their
argument, and what moral uncertainties
are dislodged in their writings. (1)
RWS Learning Outcome: Use metadiscourse to signal the project
of a paper and guide a reader from one idea to the next.
We give students opportunities to reflect on their growth in
writing and reading in relation to our learning outcomes.
Review and reflect on the four papers
you wrote this semester.
What are two ways you feel your writing
has strengthened? Give specific examples
from your papers to illustrate this. How do
these strengths add to the overall success
of your writing?
Discuss how these strengths increased
your ability to accomplish one of our chief
course outcomes: Construct an account of
an argument; translate that argument into
your own words.
-RWS 100 Final In-Class Writing
We teach what we assess.
We assess what we teach.
• We therefore use classroom activities and
homework assignments that lead into or model
the work students will be doing in their papers.
RWS 100 Project #2, Preparatory Homework
The upcoming paper on Schlosser’s text will involve: 1) constructing an account of
Schlosser’s argument and 2) explaining how outside sources deepen and clarify your
understanding of his argument. Below are a number of articles to locate, read, and
consider incorporating into your upcoming writing assignment. For homework:
• Go to the campus Library online, click on “article databases,” then EBSCO, and locate
Julia Galeota’s essay “Cultural Imperialism: An American Tradition,” Foreign Policy’s
interview with Jack Greenberg, entitled “McAtlas Shrugged,” Mohamed Zayani’s Book
Review of The McDonaldization of Society, and “Big Mac’s Makeover,” published in the
Economist.
• Select a passage from one of these outside links and, in a brief paragraph, explain how
it enriches your understanding of Schlosser’s argument.
-Amy Allen and Micah Jendian
We teach the processes of drafting and revising,
using feedback from instructors and peers.
• We make peer review a focused process, grounded in written
criteria for evaluation.
Peer Review Worksheet for Project #1: Argument Analysis
Editor’s Name: _________________ Writer’s Name:__________________
Instructions: Please do your best to give helpful, specific feedback to the writers
whose papers you review.
1. What is the writer’s project or argument? If you think the writer does not have a
project yet, what project might be suggested by the draft you’ve read?
2. Does the writer adequately summarize Ehrenreich’s project? Below, list elements of
her project that were overlooked.
3. Does the writer identify one chapter of the book to analyze? Which chapter? Does
the writer demonstrate how the chapter supports Eherenreich’s project?
4. Go through your partner’s paper and mark with a star all the places where you feel
the writer is interpreting and thinking rather than merely summarizing. Also, mark
places with a large “S” where you feel the writer is providing unnecessary summary
that does not contribute to the argument of the paper.
-Carrie Preston
We are moving toward teaching:
• Visual rhetorics
In the following image, a sample of her work,
Barbara Kruger demonstrates combining an image
with words to provoke the audience
into thinking about gender and
identity.
Although to some people, this
image is quite obvious, to others, it
may be less clear; nevertheless it is
an image created for the audience to
interpret. . . .
-RWS 200 student Jessica Marsh
We are moving toward teaching:
• The rhetoric of technology
Video created by SDSU student Mike … for project #4 in Nancy
Fox’s fall 2005 Words and Images sequence. Course texts
focused on documentary analysis.
We welcome technological innovations
that enhance teaching practices.
Liane Bryson recording audio
feedback on a student’s paper.
We have a Lower Division Writing Committee
Made up of:
• Two graduate students
• Two lecturers
• A Program Director
The Committee:
We have a Lower Division Writing Committee
Made up of:
• Two graduate students
• Two lecturers
• A Program Director
The Committee:
• Has a rotating faculty membership
• Collaborates with faculty to develop and
revise curriculum
• Invites faculty to share their innovations
and suggest curricular revision.
• Responds to all pedagogical, curricular
and administrative questions about RWS
100/200.
We assess how we’re doing as a program.
Fall 2005 Assessment Project
25 DRWS Instructors taught Barbara
Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed.
For our assessment project, 10 Instructors
contributed student papers analyzing
Ehrenreich’s argument
Eight instructors read 61 papers, using a
three-tiered rubric: Strong, Moderate, Low
30
Value to Instructors:
• discussing student work
across sections
• seeing how our students did
with a complex assignment
25
20
15
10
5
0
Low
Moderate
Strong
We value
student
writing.
We value
student
writing.
We value
student
writing.
We value student writing.
We see students as writers.
Suzanne Aurilio asks Liane Bryson’s RWS 200 students
to comment on a project that involved visual literacy.
This presentation has been brought to you by
the current Lower Division Writing Committee
Peter Manley, Ellen Quandahl, Liane Bryson, Jesse Roach, Heather Pistone
With thanks to our colleagues and students
in the Lower Division Writing Program.