The Many Methods of Rhetoric

For the majority of my experience as a student, I think that I’ve been exposed primarily to the current-traditional rhetoric model. I say this with a slight tinge of uncertainty because I also believe, trying to think back over all my years in school, that the other types of rhetoric (new and romantic) Williams discusses have also been incorporated throughout my education. Nevertheless, I’m used to the idea of “writing as thinking” (43). I’ve worked on countless writing assignments that aimed to shuttle my thoughts in one direction or another and to produce the “right answer.” And I can see why this type of teaching has led to such a significant decline in literacy for students across the nation over time. Students are uninterested in the content they have to write on and they’re intimidated by the pressure to always be mechanically and grammatically correct. The focus in writing today is all wrong.

Different types of rhetoric try to address this issue of what to center on when teaching writing and this presents another problem in and of itself. One of the most important concerns I picked up from this reading is that because there is no consensus on the best methods to instruct rhetoric and composition, most educational institutes continue to rely on the current-traditional rhetoric method. I became intrigued by the sections on new rhetoric and romantic rhetoric. This is something that we’ve been talking about in class for the past few weeks. In these methods, it’s all about process, revision, determining what you want to say, not how, and displaying your individual feelings. I found myself agreeing with the notion that writing can be improved if writers are allowed to express themselves and “search for individual ‘truth’” while letting go of all the “rules” (59). But then my feet touched the ground again when I read on and took in the opposing side of the argument. For one thing, it’s true that when reading a “personal experience paper” there is no way to know if the experiences mentioned are actually authentic (65). People make stuff up all the time just to complete an assignment and because they don’t want to actually reveal personal feelings/emotions in their writing. Additionally, as mentioned in the reading, most students (and I include myself in this) don’t feel the need to be ‘liberated’ via composition, which is a key idea in romantic rhetoric.

The task at hand of choosing the best approach to teaching writing if the emphasis can’t be on rules or writer confessions seems impossible. It’s no wonder that achievement levels in writing have plummeted. Part of the problem seems to be that too much emphasis is placed on the writer and not on the writer and audience. Writing across the curriculum (WAC) appears to be one way of tying together specific content areas and writing while paying attention to the audience. Still there are different methods of using WAC at different academic levels, so this too poses a hurdle for students and educators. Teachers in both the arts and sciences are daunted by the work and necessary collaboration that comes with teaching WAC. I found this chapter to be quite overwhelming, myself. Presented with all the different opinions and options available to educators I felt hopeless. It will be interesting to see over the next few years and with all the current technologies how schools adapt to writing in the real world as opposed to the traditional classroom assignments.