English Composition I – Week 1 Lecture

Types of Writing – Rhetoric and Introduction to Argument

This week’s lecture is brief. You will be reading about Rhetoric and Argument and view a PowerPoint presentation on Rhetorical Situations. Dan Melzer discusses rhetoric in Chapter 2 of his book, Exploring College Writing: Reading, Writing and Researching Across the Curriculum (2011): “Each writing situation – each rhetorical situation – involves a writer communicating to an audience using some kind of text (p. 56). In this week’s readings, you will look at types of writing and consider important elements such as purpose and audience. According to Melzer (2011):

There are many factors you’ll want to consider when you face rhetorical situations in college, including your purpose for writing, the audience you’re writing to, the persona or voice you take on in your writing, the type of text you’re writing, the context of the course, and the broader social context of the situation (p.56)

Simply put, rhetoric is a communication from an author/writer to an audience (Melzer, p. 56). In Week 3, Narrative and Descriptive Writing will be discussed. These are also types of Rhetoric. Argument is another type of rhetoric where a position is presented.

When writing, three elements must be present: