Composition I

Aristotle defines rhetoric as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This course will teach you to identify the rhetorical strategies available in select discursive genres. In this course, you will utilize analytic and inductive reasoning, engage university resources, document evidence to support your reasoning, and hone your research methods.

A large part of this class will encourage you to actively participate in a research community. As such, as the class progresses, your research questions and your research interests will take part in shaping the class. Nonetheless, you may be wondering what the role of writing is in the post-college career. We will begin the class by exploring the role of writing in major professions, in the process learning research methods and interview strategies. The second module focuses on climate change as a nexus for evaluating sources. In conjunction with the second module, the third module will challenge you to imagine composing arguments as a form of story-telling: as such, we will build on unit-2 essays to compose short stories.

The majority of the grade for this class will be based four major writing assignments. This will consist of: an essay based on data you will conduct through personal interviews, an essay on sustainability on Oahu, a short story building on the second essay, and a final research paper on a topic you will develop with the class. Through these four assignments, you will complete the hallmarks of the written communication foundation. You will become familiar with composition methods, strategies for finding academic sources, and with the resources of the UH Manoa Library.