What Do Students Need to Know About Rhetoric?
Book information
Description
Greensboro: University of North Carolina, 2006. — 8 p.The AP Language and Composition Exam places strong emphasis on students’ ability toanalyze texts rhetorically and to use rhetoric effectively as they compose essay responses.It’s an important question for teachers, therefore, to consider what students need to knowabout this often misunderstood term in order to write confidently and skillfully.The traditional definition of rhetoric, first proposed by Aristotle, and embellished overthe centuries by scholars and teachers, is that rhetoric is the art of observing in any givencase the available means of persuasion.The whole process of education for me was learning to put names to things I alreadyknew. That’s a line spoken by Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton’s private investigator in oneof her series of alphabet mystery novels, C is for Corpse. When I began a graduateprogram that specialized in rhetoric, I wasn’t quite sure what that word meant. But once Iwas introduced to it, I realized rhetoric was something I had always known about.
