First-Year English Rhetorical Competencies
Students who successfully complete English 151, 152, or 153 should be able to practice each of the following activities competently:
Write rhetorically, which means that students should be able to:
- Write in various genres (both formal and informal, including summary microthemes, peer critique, focused freewriting, textual and rhetorical analyses, thesis-driven essays, source-based writing, dialogue journals, dialectical notebooks, etc.) while enacting appropriate rhetorical strategies that employ metacognitive processes such as summary, analysis, response, critique, and synthesis.
- Compose original arguments that evaluate, analyze, and synthesize primary and secondary texts (including visual texts) and their structural framework (thesis statement, evidence, and support) as well as their rhetorical purposes, audiences, and situations.
- Engage in multiple drafting and revision.
- Practice and control rhetorical stylistics such as effects of grammar, diction, mechanics, font, arrangement, etc.
Read rhetorically, which means that students should be able to:
- Evaluate, analyze, and synthesize primary and secondary texts (including visual texts) and their structural framework, rhetorical purposes, audiences, and situations.
- Identify, analyze, and employ the language of rhetorical analysis and argument while discussing texts. This language includes ethos, pathos, logos, audience, tone, voice, evidence, etc.
- Examine and evaluate in-text documentation.
- Identify and analyze various genres, their conventions, and how they respond to rhetorical situations.
- Identify and analyze rhetorical stylistics such as effects of grammar, diction, mechanics, font, arrangement, etc.
Research rhetorically, which means that students should be able to:
- Identify appropriate sources through databases (electronic and more traditional)
- Evaluate sources for quality and appropriateness
- Paraphrase and summarize material accurately
- Synthesize sources
- Integrate quotations, visuals, etc. appropriately and with correct style and citations
- Use attributive tags, in-text citations, documentation, and style sheets in appropriate ways
- Understand plagiarism and its consequences
Respond to and assess student writing rhetorically, which means that students should be able to:
- Understand writing as a recursive process that is also collaborative and socially constructed.
- Learn to develop their own ideas in relation to the ideas of others.
- Employ the languages of rhetorical analysis (ethos, pathos, logos, evidence, support, etc.) and of genres and metacognitive processes (summary, analysis, response, critique, and synthesis) to critique their own and others' ideas.
- Identify and understand their peers' rhetorical purposes, audiences, and situations and the relationship among these throughout the drafting and revision process.
- Identify correct documentation and sentence-level conventions throughout the drafting and revision process.