Rhetorical Exercise Blog (Due by 11:59pm on Feb. 24)

Rhetorical Exercise 

We have been developing rhetorical knowledge and you are now tasked with delivering a message to an audience of 12th graders who are one year away from college. Your message cannot be in a format of a paper written to me, but rather it must be in the form of a genre meant to reach this particular audience. Your task is to teach these students (12th graders about a year away from college) the benefits of thinking rhetorically. Consider the arguments made by authors in our unit about writing constructs as a starting point. What might you show these students to help them adjust to thinking rhetorically as they approach their studies in college?

You write and read in many different genres. Facebook postings, text messages, emails, Tumbler, Instagram,  and Tweets are probably some genres you are familiar with, but you are free to chose a genre that makes sense for the message you want to deliver. Perhaps you could design a Prezi or a Power Point. You might want to create a YouTube video. Perhaps you could design a pamphlet or a flier.

However you develop your content and your message is up to you, but the best pieces will show students how to understand rhetorical situations and will utilize a genre of delivery to get the message across. Your file for this assignment must be saved and accessible through the Net. If, for example, you create a pamphlet, you must save the document to the cloud and create a link to post in this discussion space. Likewise, if you create a Prezi or a YouTube video, you must post a working link in the discussion board space.

This project allows you lots of leeway regarding what your end product is. In this regard, I am encouraging you to step outside the box and produce something creative. I would rather you come up short in an effort that really steps outside the box than to play it safe. This assignment is calling you to be bold and creative.

It is NOT acceptable to simply re-hash Grant-Davie's constituents of rhetoric without giving concrete examples to demonstrate these constituents as well as sound reasoning as to why studying rhetoric is helpful for student writers entering college.