This book has been developed to support English Composition courses at rural Arizona community colleges. The book adopts the metaphor of conversation to discuss the reading and writing moves students are expected to make in academic settings. The text has been organized around the general moves of reading/research (preparing to join the conversation), summarizing/quoting/paraphrasing and responding (joining the conversation) and applying rhetorical concepts for persuasion (influencing the conversation).

This course uses the study of rhetoric as an opportunity to offer instruction in critical thinking. Through extensive writing and speaking assignments, students will develop their abilities to analyze texts of all kinds and to generate original and incisive ideas of their own. Critical thinking and original analysis as expressed in writing and in speech are the paramount goals of this class. The course will thus divide its efforts between an examination of the subject matter and an examination of student writing and speaking, in order to encourage in both instances the principal aims of the course.

This course is an examination of the theory, the practice, and the implications of rhetoric & rhetorical criticism. This semester, you will have the opportunity to deepen many of your skills: Analysis, persuasion, oral presentation, and critical thinking. In this course you will act as both a rhetor (a person who uses rhetoric to persuade) and as a rhetorical critic (one who analyzes the rhetoric of others). Both the rhetor and the rhetorical critic write to persuade; both ask and answer important questions. Always one of their goals is to create new knowledge for all of us, so no endeavor in this class is a "mere exercise."

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This course specifically focuses on the ways that scientists use various methods of persuasion in the construction of scientific knowledge.

A short video explaining how to include a formal introduction of your source.(License CC-BY)

In the Rhetorical Styles area of the Excelsior OWL, you’ll learn about different rhetorical styles or, essentially, different strategies for developing your essays and other writing assignments. These basic strategies are not all encompassing but will provide you with a foundation and a flexibility to help you as you engage in writing assignments in your introductory writing classes and beyond.

Designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as a practical guide for students struggling to bring their writing up to the level expected of them by their professors and instructors.

The first in a two-volume set, A Rhetoric of Literate Action is written for "the experienced writer with a substantial repertoire of skills, [who] now would find it useful to think in more fundamental strategic terms about what they want their texts to accomplish, what form the texts might take, how to develop specific contents, and how to arrange the work of writing." The reader is offered a framework for identifying and understanding the situations writing comes out of and is directed toward; a consideration of how a text works to transform a situation and achieve the writer's motives; and advice on how to bring the text to completion and "how to manage the work and one's own emotions and energies so as to accomplish the work most effectively."

The second in a two-volume set, A Theory of Literate Action draws on work from the social sciences—and in particular sociocultural psychology, phenomenological sociology, and the pragmatic tradition of social science—to "reconceive rhetoric fundamentally around the problems of written communication rather than around rhetoric's founding concerns of high stakes, agonistic, oral public persuasion" (p. 3). An expression of more than a quarter-century of reflection and scholarly inquiry, this volume represents a significant contribution to contemporary rhetorical theory.

Course Description
WR 122 continues the focus of WR 121 in its review of rhetorical concepts and vocabulary, in the development of reading, thinking, and writing skills, along with metacognitive competencies understood through the lens of a rhetorical vocabulary. Specifically, students will identify, evaluate, and construct chains of reasoning, a process that includes an ability to distinguish assertion from evidence, recognize and evaluate assumptions, and select sources appropriate for a rhetorical task. Students will employ a flexible, collaborative, and appropriate composing process, working in multiple genres, and utilizing at least two modalities. Prerequisites: WR 121.

What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and Argumentative Perspectives is a book trying to answer the title question by contributing to rhetorical and argumentative studies. It consists of papers presented at the “First International Conference on Rhetoric in Croatia: the Days of Ivo Škarić” in May, 2012, and subsequently revised for publication. Through a variety of different routs, the papers explore the role of rhetoric and argumentation in various types of public discourse and present interdisciplinary work connecting linguists, phoneticians, philosophers, law experts and communication scientists in the common ground of rhetoric and argumentation.. The Conference was organized with the intent of paying respect to the Croatian rhetorician and professor emeritus Ivo Škarić who was the first to introduce rhetoric at the Department of Phonetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.

This lesson is an introduction to the unit, World of Words, in which students will consider the power of words and the relationship between words and actions in human relations.  Throughout the unit, students will study The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare and other shorter works to examine the effective use of rhetorical strategies authors use and that students have at their disposal to make their communication (both written and spoken) more effective as well. Image source:  "Words Have Power" by geralt on Pixabay.com.

This a collection of original writing and OER materals designed to aid learners in better understanding professional communication.

The textbook covers modes related to creative writing, such as narration and illustration, while also covering analytically-focused modes such as comparison and cause and effect.
Chapter 1: Invention
Chapter 2: Arrangement
Chapter 3: Drafting and Revising
Chapter 4: Editing and Proofreading
Chapter 5: Narrative
Chapter 6: Description
Chapter 7: Definition
Chapter 8: Illustration/Example
Chapter 9: Compare/Contrast
Chapter 10: Evaluation
Chapter 11: Cause and Effect
Chapter 12: Argument
Chapter 13: Grammar and Mechanics Mini-lessons

The Writing Spaces Web Writing Style Guide was created as a crowdsourcing project of Collaborvention 2011: A Computers and Writing Unconference. College writing teachers from around the web joined together to create this guide (see our Contributors list). The advice within it is based on contemporary theories and best practices.

This course takes rhetoric as a system for designing meaning that helps us understand complex situations and ideas, enlighten and persuade others to act, and thus reshape our world. We’ll study rhetoric systematically and empirically, both analyzing how it works on us as readers, and testing how we can make informed rhetorical choices as we design our own texts.

This course seeks to provide a supportive context for students to grow significantly as writers by discovering and engaging with issues that matter to them. Writing on social and ethical issues, we can see ourselves within a tradition of authors such as Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, George Orwell, Rachel Carson, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., who have used the power of the pen to inspire social change.

"Sports, not religion, is the opiate of the people." So says David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker and a former sportswriter. Many of our heroes are sports heroes, and for many of us, sports were an important part of our childhood years. Sports are big business, even on college campuses, and they are the subject of many classic movies. In this introductory writing class we consider the role of sports in our own lives and explore the cultural meanings of sports in America. Sports have produced a large body of excellent descriptive and analytic writing; we'll read writers as diverse as Hank Aaron, John Updike, David Foster Wallace, and Malcolm Gladwell on the joys and conundrums of baseball, boxing, football, tennis, and running.
The primary work of the class is improving students' communication skills. We'll write and revise 3 essays, including an investigative essay, and we'll also give one short oral report. Revision is an important part of the class; all essays will be revised at least once.