Aristotle defines rhetoric as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. In turn, this course will teach you to identify the rhetorical strategies available in select discursive genres. Although this course will focus on the mode of argumentative writing, the impetus behind this choice of genre is to help you build your skills in analytic and inductive reasoning, utilize 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. To warm up to this, we will begin the class by focusing on different modules. In the first module, we will focus on interviewing professionals in a field you are interested in. In the second unit, we will read short stories and reflect on the processes of composition. The final unit of the course will be a research paper based on the students’ interest.
The majority of the grade for this class will be based three major writing assignments. Two of these writing assignments will be analytic essays to help build the writing skills you will use throughout your college journey. Through these 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. Since a large part of research is based on reading comprehension, there will be some additional evaluative methods as well, including online postings to a course website hosted through Laulima.
Required Texts:
A course reader available from Professional Image (phone 973-6599).