Rhetoric I
Prof. G. Steinberg

The entire class will be divided into groups of three or four people.  Each group will be formed based on a topic that all members of the group identify as a subject about which they consider themselves an expert.  These topics and groups will provide the basis for ESSAY 3, SPEECH 2, and ESSAY 4.

For ESSAY 3, I want you to write a personal position paper on your group's topic.  This assignment is meant to be an opportunity for you to contemplate and verbalize your opinions on your group's topic before getting input from the other members of your group.  Since the topic is one that you have identified as a subject about which you consider yourself an expert, you probably already have definite opinions about the various issues and controversies within the topic.  This essay will be an occasion for you to reflect on, clarify, and articulate those opinions.  Your focus as you write the essay should be on your opinions and your ethos as an expert on the topic.

This assignment is a bit more informal than your other papers so far in this class.  But note that a more informal assignment is not an invitation or an excuse to be sloppy or lazy.  Although this assignment is more informal, you are still responsible for writing a clear, logical, well-supported, persuasive essay that argues one clear, specific, interesting claim.  Keep in mind, for example, that your essay will be graded based on my usual grading criteria for papers.

I recommend that you express your opinions and give your reasons for holding those opinions.  Your reasons can be primarily personal, based on your personal experience and your individual likes and dislikes.  But to be persuasive, you must establish your ethos -- your authority -- to speak on your topic, and you must give lots of specific evidence from your personal experience to support the assertions you make.  You must show your reader that you know what you're talking about and that your personal opinions are valid because of your expertise on the topic.  You won't be very persuasive if you seem to be nothing but a crackpot or a lightweight.  So, back up everything you say with concrete evidence.  Establish your authority to speak on the topic.  Don't pretend to be something you're not, but give your reader reason to believe and trust you -- by giving your reader lots of detailed evidence, lots of background about you and your knowledge of your topic, and lots of reasons for thinking as you do on the topic.

Click here to go to the course syllabus.

For your second speech, you will work in the groups formed for ESSAY 3 on the same topic as ESSAY 3.  As a group, you will make a presentation on your topic to the class. Each group will decide exactly how the group will approach its topic and presentation. The only ground rules are as follows:

1. the individual speeches must together form a coordinated group presentation (rather than simply a collection of detached, unrelated speeches);
2. in the group presentation, each individual member of the group must speak for at least 3 minutes and for no more than 5 minutes; and
3. the group presentation must constitute a single, coherent argument of some kind (with reasons and evidence in support of an evaluation, a call to action, a recommendation, or some other controversial claim).

Each member of the group will be graded individually on the quality of his or her portion of the presentation; there will be no collective or group grade.  Keep in mind that each speech will be graded based on my usual grading criteria for speeches.

For ESSAY 4, write a new argument about the same topic as you discussed in Essay 3 and Speech 2.  This paper is not a revision of ESSAY 3, nor should it simply repeat what you presented to class as SPEECH 2.

This paper should be a more formal piece than ESSAY 3 -- with more objective evidence and sources.  It should also go considerably beyond what you and your group presented for SPEECH 2.

I recommend that you write an essay

1. in which you qualify or refute your group's conclusions as presented in SPEECH 2,
2. in which you include all the relevant information that you could not include in your group's presentation for SPEECH 2,
3. in which you reflect on and re-evaluate what you said in ESSAY 3 in light of the new information that you and your group discovered while working on SPEECH 2,
4. in which you add to what your group presented in SPEECH 2 -- providing additional evidence, additional grounds, additional backing, additional sources, a new "because" clause, or additional rebuttals of opposing arguments, or 
5. in which you evaluate your group's presentation in SPEECH 2, detailing what arguments and evidence might have been stronger and more persuasive than what your group actually presented.

Choose only one of these options, however.

Keep in mind that your essay will be graded based on my usual grading criteria for papers.