Students should develop skills in each of the four WOVE modes. Specifically, students should be able to:
Written
- analyze professional writing to assess its purpose, audience, and rhetorical strategies
- construct arguments that integrate logical, ethical, and emotional appeals
- write source papers analyzing a rhetorical situation and identifying and accurately documenting appropriate source material
- avoid distracting or confusing sentence-level errors
- reflect systematically on all of their communication processes, strengths, goals, and growth
Oral
- give an oral presentation, either individually or as part of a team, using effective invention, organization, language, and delivery strategies
- be an effective team member in small groups as contributor, listener, collaborator, and presenter
Visual
- rhetorically analyze visual communication, such as an advertisement, Public Service Announcement (PSA), etc.
- create a visual argument (i.e., advertisement, bookmark, poster, slide presentation)
Electronic
- rhetorically analyze electronic communication, such as websites
- create an electronic composition (e.g., communication ePortfolio)
“Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression.”
— Marshall McLuhan
WOVE
- ensure that all modes contribute to the primary message, purpose, and targeted audience
- develop clear, purposeful relationships between the modes
- exhibit a sensitivity to differences in modes and their cultural implications
- create a rich, interactive experience for the audience
- develop confidence in ability to adapt skills and knowledge used here to future situations
During English 250, you will be helping students recognize the role of argumentation and persuasion. In addition to adapting to different audiences and purposes, students need to recognize that various forms of academic communication require different choices of format, level of language, and documentation and that these conventions may differ from discipline to discipline. By analyzing rhetorical strategies in the readings (the structure of arguments, level of language, selection of details, etc.), students learn new strategies to try in their own assignments. Argumentation helps develop key cognitive skills, including defining different positions, synthesizing evidence to support arguments, and assessing an audience’s underlying assumptions. Evaluating the various kinds of appeals available to support an argument (i.e., ethos, logos, pathos) further advances students’ understanding of the relationship among communicator, text, and audience.
Through using both primary and secondary sources, students can choose substantive content suited to a particular audience and purpose, synthesize multiple sources, and use an assigned documentation system. Rather than assigning one documented composition, you may find that students will benefit from several assignments using increasingly diverse and complex evidence. Remember that your class may be the only one in which many students learn about citation of sources and that this skill will be important in their academic life. While grammar and mechanics are usually not directly taught in English 250, it’s helpful to discuss why conventions are important. If several students make serious, chronic errors, limited direct teaching of those areas may be appropriate, either in a small group or as a class.