Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Rhetoric and Composition(PatriciaFancher)/Course description

Course description
“Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds.”

-Douglas Adams

This course focuses on writing and critical thinking by using an integrated approach to writing that teaches various rhetorical strategies for reading and constructing arguments (written and visual) in both print and digital environments. You will learn to read texts critically according to key components in argumentative discourse (i.e., claims, grounds, explicit and implicit assumptions, fallacies, etc.) and to recognize the different purposes of argument. You will write and revise three writing projects based on issues and research raised in the various texts read during the semester. The assignments will give you extensive practice in reading critically and writing according to the rhetorical conventions of an argumentative essay using the full range of writing processes—invention, arrangement, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading—for multiple assignments. During this course, there will be four course strands that guide your learning:

Learning Goals
Rhetoric and Argumentation - Rhetoric, where we will explore the uses of rhetoric as a tool of persuasion in written, visual, and multimodal texts. We’ll learn how rhetoric works through attention to persona, audience, and persuasive appeals (such as pathos, logos, ethos, kairos). Rhetoric teaches us how we might persuade others, and whether to be persuaded ourselves. In addition, we will examine strategies of argument and critical thinking about the world we live in. To these ends, we will pay particular attention to cultural and individual assumptions, to evidence and other types of support, to arguments and fallacies, and to rhetoric and language. This strand also encompasses the entire writing process (abstracts, outlines, multiple drafts, edited final products), as well as formal attention to arrangement, style, grammar, punctuation, and document design conventions.

Information Design and Technology – We will also learn to design multimodal compositions that form dynamic visual-based arguments that will augment or supplement your text-based arguments.

Research – Research, where we will use a wide variety of conventional and online search strategies to gather information about a topic and learn to integrate these sources into writing while producing an original text. Most important to this strand is the promotion of academic integrity and establishing our ethos as writers. Our credibility as writers is the foundation of learning how to research effectively and appropriately, and how to integrate our sources into our writing honestly. To that end, we’ll explore effective strategies for note-taking, integrating quotations, and learning to hold a scholarly conversation with our sources.

Collaboration – Collaboration, where we will gain experience working with others to achieve a common goal and learn the social aspects of writing processes. We will learn the value of multicultural differences and the value of persuasive discourse in cultural contexts. Collaboration also means helping hold each other accountable for academic integrity. We’ll learn about our texts, our topics, and our own methods as writers by engaging in many collaborative activities during class.

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