Describes three approaches to writing a persuasive sales letter that require the student to either taste a product, try out an item, or touch an object before writing the sales letter to a prospective audience. Describes preassignment activities, the assignment, and student reaction to the activities. (SR)

Explains the importance of competence in the use of informal logic for physical education and educational sport teachers/managers. The article discusses historical background, critical thinking as applied to managerial roles, the need to think clearly, and aspects of critical thinking, argument development, ambiguity, acceptable and unacceptable…

Profiles of Organizational Influence Strategies were completed by 529 office workers. Except for reason, they used all strategies (friendliness, bargaining, coalition, assertiveness, and authority) more than mangers did. Bargaining and authority were used more with coworkers than with managers; bargaining was used more for personal requests and…

Reports on exploratory empirical investigations on the performances of Dutch secondary education students in identifying unexpressed premises and argumentation schemes. Finds that, in the absence of any disambiguating contextual information, unexpressed major premises and non-syllogistic premises are more often correctly identified that…

Describes a writing assignment for high school English in which students argue persuasively on a current issue of their choice. Extends this assignment by having students revise the papers into letters to periodicals or politicians. Urges introducing students into active social discourse. (HB)

Suggests that understanding the "tools of rhetorical analysis" in relation to persuasion can help business communication teachers better incorporate the concept of consensus building into their courses. Discusses incorporating rhetorical techniques (using metaphors, calling on readers' schemata, and using narratives) into a business…

Presents criteria to help teachers choose textbooks for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) composition students, based on how well each text teaches users to write argumentative essays (a form foreign to many ESL students). Evaluates 14 textbooks using these criteria. (SR)

Finds the rank-ordering of request strategies along five interactive constraint dimensions to be similar between Koreans and Americans except for effectiveness of strategies. Shows the U.S. participants considered the direct statement strategy as the most effective way of making a request, whereas Korean participants rated it as the least…

Claims that Adlai Stevenson adapted the tenets of contemporary civic republicanism as a pragmatic to the response to the obstacles that confronted him in his 1952 presidential campaign. Analyzes his campaign rhetoric to reveal the strengths and limitations of republicanism as a political argument. Explores the complex relationship between…

Analyzes the corporate apologetic discourses of three paradigmatic cases (at Chrysler, Toshiba, and Volvo) and examines the use of persuasive descriptions and strategic dissociations preferred by these corporate apologists. Shows how organizations label their wrongdoing in a way that displays sorrow but limits culpability and use dissociations to…

Finds no significant effects of an instructional intervention on students' persuasive writing at two grade levels (third and fifth). Determines the categories and types of written persuasion used by students at four grade levels (third, fifth, 10th, and 12th). (SR)

Tests a rational model of the elaboration of themes found in rejection messages, using Japanese and American participants. Finds partial support for the initial rational model but notes two key revisions: identifies two new themes in rejection messages and suggests substantial differences in the way Americans and Japanese elaborate themes to serve…

Illuminates Kenneth Burke's characteristics of a mystical rhetoric as they issue from "purpose" as a dominant dramatistic element. Offers a case study in mystical rhetoric by identifying the essential qualities of a mystical narrative and demonstrating how these qualities operate in Chiara Lubich's 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech.…

Describes changes in approaches and theories in science teaching. The oldest theory asserts that children are simple knowledge receivers. Discovery learning appeared in the 1960s, followed by constructivism, and then the cognitive acceleration model of learning. Author states that persuasion is an important aspect of learning that has been…

Presents an intellectual framework for describing a visual-verbal interface. Applies the implications of the framework to collaborative work by illustrating ways in which the authors used the framework to observe and teach collaborative teams of student graphic designers. (RS)