A symposium in the November 2006 issue of "College English" addresses the question, "What should college English be?" In this article, the author presents his answer to this question--it should be a functional approach to English studies. By English studies he means everything that is done in English departments. Most English departments teach…

Author discusses rhetoric, lists characteristics of rhetorical", i.e. analytical and argumentative, writing, and suggests approaches for the classroom teacher. (SP)

Emphasis on writer's role, audience, and thesis can help students improve their writing.

Selecting criteria for usage is done in basically the same way for both technical writing and other forms of composition. Similarly, the same rhetorical theory applies to the teaching of both, and proves especially helpful in the teaching of formal report-writing skills in required freshman composition courses. Focusing on the appropriate voice,…

Argues that generative rhetoric can lead technical writing students to produce more effective and better developed business reports. (TJ)

Emphasizing expository writing, this paper describes the writing instruction approaches used in IKIP Bandung, an Indonesian institute. The syntax-to-rhetoric approach is discussed along with strategies to help students practice topic development with appropriate linguistic forms. (Contains three references.) (LB)

After a brief discussion of the deficiencies of both prescriptive and descriptive rhetoric, the author presents a generative rhetoric as a workable technique for teaching composition. An outline is given of a generative "macro-rhetoric" which deals with the large task of how to organize and develop a statement or idea. Types of sentences, four…

In technical writing classes writing can come alive to students, because in such classes students are knowledgeable about their subjects and can simulate writing to real audiences in business and industry rather than only to teachers. Students practice writing within determined and specified formats and to a standard style in response to…

Analysis of essays by first-year college students on humanities and social science subjects suggests that problems in style and structure stem from student misunderstandings of discipline-specific assumptions and conventions concerning critical analysis and "argument." Discussions and models can help students create new, academically…

In this study, four sections of a beginning speech composition class were assigned randomly to two instructors, each of whom taught one section using a conventional syllabus and the other section using a unit on organization of ideas which contained the Rhetorical Jigsaw Puzzle (RJSP) technique. Using this technique, students reassembled the parts…

As background to an argument for purposive reintegration of discourse study, this paper examines the concept of explanatory discourse as it developed within the Western rhetorical tradition. Following a discussion of the rise of a rhetoric of explanation, the first section cites the roots of the explanatory pedagogy developing during the first…

A college composition course based on teaching the difference between male and female modes of rhetoric offers advantages over the traditional course in reference, persuasive, and expressive discourse: the appeal to student emotion provided by the terms "female" and "male," and the clarity of the terms in delineating the…

The purposes of the basic rhetorically-focused writing module presented in this document are to aid classroom instruction and to furnish a model of ideas and simplified techniques for developing other writing modules. Contents of this document are an introduction, a discussion of the journal as a writing form, an outline overview of the model, and…

Discusses James Britton's "English" course, which progresses from participant to spectator and from the transactional to the poetic in writing, as an alternative to the impractical and unnatural five-paragraph essay. (HTH)