Spigelman and Grobman’s, Why We Chose Rhetoric: Necessity, Ethics, and the (Re)Making of a Professional Writing Program, is a literary analysis using rhetorical strategies to provide support for why communication skills require a strong foundation in liberal arts. In this piece the authors discuss importance of critical insight and reflection, how they go about teaching ethics and, the significance of discourse in developing communication skills.…
In “Should Colleges Really Eliminate the College Lecture,” Christine Gross-Loh presents the dilemma regarding lectures, describes the complex history of rhetoric, uncovers both sides of the argument, and explains the importance of oratory speech skills. She establishes the article by first using a personal anecdote regarding her own lack of instruction when it came to giving lectures, and does so to draw attention to the decline of the lecture. Moreover, she highlights the fact that a speech done right gives power to the presenter and allows them to impact their audience. Likewise, she provides quotes from professors and professionals to accentuate the components behind the deterioration of rhetoric and explain the idea of active learning.…
Students will apply disciplined thought to language in order to comprehend and analyze college-level readings and to compose college-level essays that are coherent, detailed, and free of serious error. In their essays, students will be asked to use a variety of rhetorical support including primary and secondary research.x…
In the article Rhetoric as a Course of Study, Fleming examines the simultaneous rise of rhetorical theory and continued decline of rhetorical education, and he proposes ways that this situation might be changed. He speaks about the importance of knowing the rhetoric and how it should be more common in education, however recently rhetoric has become something greatly used in politics and less often in common language. “What would a contemporary rhetorical education look like? It would have a curricular shape that is neither so capacious that it reduces everything to its terms nor so narrow that it dissolves in the face of "content." In fashioning a program of study oriented to the development of the good rhetor, the old triad is, I believe,…
Ralph Waldo Emerson effectively constructs the idea that the intended audience is teaching/being taught the most ineffective way through the use of his didactic diction, sincere tone, and parallel syntax. The didactic diction within Emerson’s essay, manipulates the intended audience by appearing as a person of authority, a teacher. An example of this authority would be “...irreconcilable hater of his vice and the imperturbable slighter of his trifling.” This use of scholastic word choice confirms that he is a credible source of information; which then helps his purpose of exposing the ineffectiveness of the traditional education system.…
Emerson illustrates his theory through an anecdote about how the natural way of learning is possible and actually more efficient than its traditional counterpart. He does this by giving examples of…
Frye believe that our society has little interest in literacy. Frye believe that a teacher must engage in a fight to help the student provoke and reject the spoken procedure and store all responses, to accept inactive recognition. He is saying that getting students and people in general to start thinking critically and expressing their thoughts clearly will be a struggle as there are many misunderstandings in our society about literacy. Frye he firmly believes that he can think that he has ideas, and that if he is just given the chance to express them he will be right.…
A decade ago at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace unfurled the pervasive cliché speech in defense of liberal arts education to be a shifting mentality in the way we think. Sophocles’ Oedipus The King (1978) has exemplary drawn out the myth and theme of self-knowledge and captivated the emphasis of self-reflection, dialogue, and reason. Indeed, these are the dispositions that are needed for cultivation to facilitate a well-educated society which allows the restoration of the means of skholē (the root of school); a place of education to pass time and space in togetherness. However, the school’s curriculum is menacingly training students to most efficiently retrieve information in competition of an A, rather than spending the time to interpret…
The essay highlights the importance of verbal skills in critical thinking. Frye states that schools and teachers play an inevitable role in developing a student’s thought process. He says that a student should be taught on how to think and how to put it in words. He states that thinking is a matter of practice and everyone should take enough time to think. That is the only way in which one can articulate the thoughts, without which, it is meaningless.…
The author Hephzibah Roskelly is an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the former Chief Reader for the AP Language and Composition Exam and former chair of the SAT Reading Committee. The University of North Carolina is the leader in higher education in research, innovative teaching, and public service and the first public university in the nation. This information can be useful to anyone that’s about to study rhetoric and rhetorical strategies. Furthermore, college professor can employ this text to demonstrate to their student the importance of…
As we learned in class, “rhetoric is one of the oldest and most studied human arts in Western civilization.” The rhetorical tradition can be traced back to the Sophists who first taught rhetoric in the ancient Mediterranean world and were viewed as controversial figures because of it. The Sophists, and specifically Aristotle, laid the groundwork for modern public communication. The Sophists were the first to systematize rhetoric into a true art or discipline and believed that anyone could become a skilled rhetorician with proper teaching and practice. Aristotle was essentially the ‘father’ of rhetorical study and was the first person to systematize the study of rhetoric into a…
In the first lesson we have went over a lot of material and in turn I have learned a lot. A major thing I have learned from this first chapter is rhetoric. Rhetoric is the fluency and ability to get to the point across in your writing while using all the “laws” of the English language correctly. Although hard to do, in order to have good rhetoric you must avoid Engfish, show don’t tell, and have good word choice.…
a) The claim that Emerson effectively advances is that humans should not conform to society, but rather they should think for themselves and believe in what they do. He writes, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius.” This quote supports Emerson’s main argument that each person should think for themselves and to not just accept what is written in a history or literary book. Emerson plays on the reader’s pathos, or emotions, by saying, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” This statement appeals to the reader because Emerson is creating a bond between his words and the reader by relating to the audience on a personal level and telling the audience to trust them. Emerson uses logic by stating, “Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist.” Emerson feels that to be a man, one must not conform to the format set out by…
In this essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson describes his view of an ideal education. What are its defining characteristics?…
The best way to learn is from one’s own experiences. Learning from books is important; however, they don’t give an individual the full perspective of something. Emerson states,…