Rhetorical training aims to help students become a certain kind of person by internalizing the art of rhetoric. The goal is to develop a student's "facilitas," or the capacity to produce appropriate and effective language for any situation. A rhetorical approach to composition also helps students assess different audiences, draw on available resources to create change, and analyze the rhetoric of others. It involves two main components: analyzing rhetorical works and producing new rhetorical messages.

1. TEACHING COMPOSITION
FROM A RHETORICAL
PERSPECTIVE

2. WHY TEACH STUDENTS TO THINK AND WRITE RHETORICALLY?
(also, what’s rhetoric?)

3. “The goal of rhetorical training is neither a material product, nor a
body of knowledge, nor technical proficiency in achieving pre-
determined ends; it is rather to become a certain kind of person,
one who has internalized the art of rhetoric and who possesses what
Quintilian called ‘facilitas’ (X.i.1): ‘the capacity to produce
appropriate and effective language in any situation.’ The aim of
rhetorical study, in other words, is character. The ‘facilitas’ of
rhetoric…is ‘resident’ in the educated person, who doesn’t so much
learn rhetoric as ‘becomes rhetorical’” (179).
-David Fleming, “Rhetoric as a Course of Study”
BECOMING RHETORICAL

4. a rhetorical approach to
composition aims to help students…
• assess and appropriately respond to a wide variety of
audiences and communication situations.
• draw upon and mobilize the resources they have at
hand in order to effect some sort of change in the
world.
• recognize and analyze the rhetorical moves of others.

5. a quick and dirty history of rhetoric in the West…

6. two main operations in
rhetoric-based composition:
analysis and production

7. audience
communicatormessage
exigence purpose
context
circulation/
recirculation
modality/
medium
genre
the
rhetorician’s
toolbox

8. 1st edition: 19361st edition: 1977
first,
focus on
rhetorical
basics:
audience,
message,
purpose

9. then talk about
the rhetorical
effects of the
means of
communication