Rhetorical Strategies is a workbook-meets-text, or "worktext," designed for high-school and college composition students to improve their persuasive writing. This worktext is filled with user-friendly explanations, models, and exercises. The exercises help students consider the situations (purposes, audiences, and context) in which their writing will matter. Several topics include: parts of an argument, logical fallacies, paraphrasing, documenting sources, style, and revision. There is also a chapter on using grammar/ punctuation appropriately for audiences and sample student writing. An Instructor's Guide is available.
"Writing is re-writing--, as many great writers have observed. Revision, or “re-envisioning” allows for more possibilities: ideas and ways of expressing those ideas more fully. How many activities, similar to revision, require practice? And involve transformation and adaptation? Painting, building furniture, running, fishing, playing chess, and more. Each activity is a process that takes energy, concentration, trial-and-error as well as “fits-and-starts.” What is your North Star or passion?"
Excerpt from chapter one of Rhetorical Strategies for composition
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Rhetoric
Chapter 2: Argumentation
Chapter 3: Rhetorical Situations
Chapter 4: Appeals and Fallacies
Chapter 5: Voice
Chapter 6: Stylistics
Chapter 7: Revision
Chapter 8: Documenting Sources
Chapter 9: Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage
Chapter 10: Visual Arguments
Endorsements for Rhetorical Strategies for Composition: Cracking an academic code by: Dr. Karen Wink
"Wink's clear explication of the assumptions underlying academic and professional writing persuades us of the continuing relevance of classical rhetoric. The textbook's contemporary examples, practical exercises, and tools for revision will engage composition students from high school to upper-division undergraduate level."
- Faye Ringel, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of English, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
"Wink's text offers the essentials of classical rhetoric for writing students in a textbook that is brief, clear and yet amazingly thorough. Using questions as headings, Wink covers everything from assessing the writer's initial rhetorical situation, to the five parts of an argument, the appeals of ethos, pathos and logos, and the common fallacies, down through matters of style, revision, documentation, and proofreading. Traditional material like the writing process is covered, but in a way that makes them part of the overall strategy of a well-designed argument. At the same time, less frequently covered topics are included so that students acquire a deeper appreciation of rhetorical argument, as in Wink's version of the stases combined with the topics in Chapter 2, or her especially strong coverage of Style in a chapter (6) that includes a useful list of figures of speech and methods of sentence analysis and invention. Drawing on her years of classroom experience, Wink includes published and student-written examples throughout, as well as useful tables, checklists and exercises that immediately apply the material just explained. Altogether, Karen Wink's text covers everything needed for a complete, rhetorically-based writing course in the most engaging and student-friendly way possible."
- Jeanne Fahnestock, Ph.D., Professor of English, University of Maryland. She is the author of Rhetorical Figures in Science, and co-author of A Rhetoric of Argument.
"Wink’s text is valuable for secondary and post-secondary writing instruction. Written from the deep knowledge of someone who understands writing as a process, this text is an effective tool to accompany the teaching and learning of how to write well. Most specifically, this text makes clear how to write cogent, powerful arguments that respond to various situations and purposes. Thus, this text is an excellent one for educators working with high-school seniors as a way to prepare them for life beyond high school as well as for educators working with students in post-secondary schools.”
- Kim N. Parker, Ph.D., English Teacher, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge, MA.; Immediate Past President, New England Association of Teachers of English.
