How to Use This Guide

This document is intended to highlight resources available to address the resource goal of Understanding Rhetorical Situations in a Second-Year Writing Course.  All resources are Open Access and can be downloaded or added to a Course Management System via hyperlink.

Introduction

Rhetorical Knowledge is one of the five main learning outcomes for the Ohio Transfer Module’s Ohio guidelines for Second-Year Writing. The Department of Higher Education recognizes that Second-Year Writing builds on the skills of First-Year Writing and adds the following skills to what a student should be able to do by the end of the course:

1. Analyze argumentative strategies and persuasive appeals.

2. Employ appropriate argumentative strategies and persuasive appeals in their writing.

This chapter focuses student understanding of rhetorical situations as described by the ODHE guidelines in students’ writing and reading assignments.

Second-Year Writing students should have a good understanding of the Rhetorical Situations. As students work on argumentative writing, many of the skills needed for Second-Year Writing start to coalesce or overlap. Some of the material in this chapter duplicates the recommended chapters or exercises from the Critical Thinking chapter, but the material and exercises can be easily adapted to focus the learning objectives from either chapter.

This description is intended to apply to a range of Second-Year Writing courses and includes several collaboration activities that can be used in a seated classroom, electronically with the course’s Learning Management System (LMS), or with various Web 2.0 applications. These descriptions and exercises can be integrated regardless of the types of readings chosen for the course, the genres a course may focus on, or the types of written assignments used. This guide is intended to demonstrate items that may be incorporated into both an online or seated section of a Second-Year Writing course.  

Learning Objectives

Analyze argumentative strategies and persuasive appeals for the following:

1. Rhetorical Situation

2. Claim

3. Support and Evidence

4. Assumptions

5. Logic/Logical Fallacies

6. Ramifications/Implications