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Requirements for all Essays (PDF)

Assignment Description

Essays consist of the following:

1. RRR (Ready-Ready Revision) for Workshop
2. Mandatory Revision
3. Optional Revision
4. A Postwrite

More details are given below:

1. Reader-Ready Revision (RRR) for Workshop (a complete version): I do not comment on this version.
2. Mandatory Revision incorporates any suggestions from your workshop group and from the Writing Center that you find useful. I grade the Mandatory Revision.
3. Optional Revision: If you wish, you may revise any Mandatory Revision once more, BUT
   1. if and only if you consult with the Writing Center before turning the Optional Revision in to me. No exceptions.
   2. The Optional Revision’s grade will replace the Mandatory Revision’s grade.
4. A Postwrite accompanies the Mandatory and Optional Revisions. It is your opportunity as a rhetor to explain what rhetorical approaches, strategies, and techniques you incorporated into your essay in order to make it persuasive, thus demonstrating your conscious understanding of the art of rhetoric and of your audience.
5. Criteria for Evaluating Your Essays: Your essays will be evaluated for
   1. Clarity, Coherence and Consistency
   2. Interesting, insightful, and relevant content
   3. Originality and depth of thought in analysis and persuasion
   4. Appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos
   5. Nuanced discussion of ideas
   6. Explicit use of rhetorical strategies, techniques, and style
   7. Explicit explanation of assumptions (yours and theirs)
   8. Explicit use of ethical concepts
   9. Active engagement with ideas and with opposition’s counter-argument
   10. Awareness of your audience (i.e., the audience is accommodated, kairos is established)
   11. Prose that is varied, clear, accurate, concise, interesting, and essentially error free
   12. Adherence to format—e.g., use headings when requested, use MLA documentation
   13. Always your goal should be to create new knowledge.

Format

Following directions is part of accommodating your reader

1. All essays must have page numbers and meaningful titles
2. All essays must have Acknowledgements of Workshop and Acknowledgment of Writing Center, a Works Cited, in-text citations and a Postwrite.
3. For details on MLA format, see Purdue's

Posts

1. Everyone has to write one post each week (~100-250 words each). These posts are informal writing -- I will read these for content without worrying about style.
    
2. Possible things you might write about in your posts:
   1. Ideas that didn’t get expressed in class about texts, debates, or class discussions or that you want to explain more fully or that you want to argue for or against
   2. Comments on the rhetoric beyond our class—the rhetoric of websites, texts from your other classes or elsewhere (e.g., articles or letters in the Tech, the Globe, in professional journals)
   3. Provocative ideas about ethical or rhetorical issues that you want to raise
   4. Responses to comments on our Stellar forum made by fellow students or me
   5. Responses to articles on Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Art of Persuasion --or new articles of your own.
   6. Any other topic to which you can connect rhetoric and/or ethics in interesting ways.

Value of various assignments

Extra Credit Possibilities: There are 4 extra credit possibilities. Each will add 0.1 point to your final point total. Although this might not sound like much, I do not round grades up—so, if you have a 10.9 average, you get a B+ for the course. If you did 1 extra credit thing, I'd add 0.1 and then your average would be 11.0, an A- for the course.

1. For each time you consult the Writing Center (for this course) for other than the 1st mandatory consultation, I will add 0.1 points
2. For a total of 13 Stellar posts (i.e., 3 additional posts beyond the required 10), I will add 0.1 point (i.e., no extra credit for only 12 posts)
3. Read an article in a rhetoric journal and write an essay (250-500 words) in which you (1) first summarize the article and then (2) explain how it applies to rhetoric you’ve seen in class or in the world. The journals are Rhetoric Review, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, Poroi: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention, Pretext, Rhetorica analysis and commentary about media ethics and rhetoric.

Assignment Details

Essay 1 – Critical Rhetorical Analysis (CRA) of a Speech, RRR Version (PDF)

Essay 1 – Critical Rhetorical Analysis (CRA) of a Speech, Mandatory Revision (PDF)

Essay 1 – Optional Revision (PDF)

Essay 2 – Eramus Argument, RRR Version (PDF)

Essay 2 – Eramus Argument, Mandatory Revision (PDF)

Essay 3 – Persuasion, RRR Version (PDF)

Essay 3 – Persuasion, Mandatory Version (PDF)

Informative Speech (PDF)

Debates (PDF)

Final Speech – Written Version (PDF)