Although first enunciated in 1827 by Samuel Newman, the modes of discourse--narration, description, exposition, and argument--were not very popular until formulated in 1866 and presented in the United States in a rhetoric textbook in 1885. After 1890, they were gradually accepted by the most influential rhetoricians of the day, and their use in…

Ascertaining that the college freshman and professional writing he analyzed did not differ significantly in the rank order or frequency with which transitional devices were used in description, author advises that it may be a waste of time to teach high school and college students these devices as if they were not already a basic component of…

Designed for use by composition students as well as teachers, the essays and background discussions in this book address themselves to questions of theory and practice in rhetoric. The book is divided into sections on invention, form, and style, and contains articles by such authors as Janet Emig, Wayne C. Booth, Richard L. Larson, Kenneth Burke,…

Analyzes changes in content and shifts in emphasis in rhetoric texts from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. Suggests that the current-traditional approach to the teaching of rhetoric used in most college classrooms has a strong similarity to that advocated by early rhetoricians. (RBW)

Over the last 3 decades or so, English and its related disciplines of Rhetoric and Composition have adopted new tools of research--tools other than the traditional ones of narrative and description. These other tools are empirical or scientific, those that are common to the social sciences, including experiments, case studies, surveys, and…

This curriculum guide provides suggested learning activities for a sequential program in composition skills for grades K-12. The composition skills discussed are listed in developmental levels, not necessarily in terms of grade levels. It is recommended that the student become familiar with basic skills before progressing to the more complex ones.…

Francis Christensen's Rhetoric Program stresses narrative-descriptive and expository writing, and offers a guide for the structure of the paragraph. In this approach, students develop their composition skills by writing sentences similar to model sentences that Christensen has extracted from the works of successful writers. The basic model is the…

This paper demonstrates the compatability of Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient, and final) and George Campbell's Four Forms of Discourse (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) and synthesizes them to form an ordered yet flexible writing model that can be used in composition instruction. Within the context of…

This cumulative writing program for grades 7-12 of the Arlington County Public Schools presents a basic philosophy of composition which assumes that the process of writing consists of "probing deeply into a subject, ordering thought, and placing those thoughts on paper in such a way as to assure meaning." Following the discussions of the three…

Two articles on sentence construction and eight on the paragraph comprise this publication. Francis Christensen contributes four articles on (1) the use of loose, cumulative sentences, (2) sentence openers, with illustrations from Hemingway, (3) a generative rhetoric for the paragraph, and (4) the formation of principles of paragraph composition…

Some of Professor Kenneth Pike's tagmemic theory is explained, and an attempt to apply it in freshman English classes at the University of Michigan is described. Two writing subjects (a concrete object and an abstraction) are examined from the aspects of contrast; range of variation; and distribution with respect to class, context, and matrix. The…

Suggestions are presented to assist the nontechnically trained English as a second language teacher to create a syllabus for a technical writing course for foreign students who are studying science and technology. The syllabus for the English for Science and Technology (EST) writing course is based on the format of technical writing derived from…

The first statewide direct writing assessment was conducted for grade 8 by the California Assessment Program (CAP) in the spring of 1987. Each student wrote an essay in response to 1 of 15 prompts (writing tasks) representing: (1) an autobiographical incident; (2) a report of information; (3) a solution to a problem; and (4) an evaluation. In all,…

This language unit for grade 10 builds on a definition of the expository use of language developed in the two previous 10th-grade units. In a brief overview of report language, the referential language of Thomas Huxley is compared with the expressive language of Edgar Allan Poe. The writings of S. I. Hayakawa, Hans Guth, and others are examined…

This collection of essays on literary composition sets forth rhetorical principles formulated from a close inductive study of contemporary American prose. The first essay develops a system of analyzing sentences by structural levels and outlines a generative rhetoric for the sentence consisting of the processes of "addition,""direction of…