Rhetoric Part 2

The art of rhetoric, when I first came into English this freshman year I didn’t really know what to expect. During high school I found myself aware of the word rhetoric but I don’t think I truly understood what it meant to write a rhetoric paper. Rhetoric as defined at the beginning of the year is the “art of effective expression” and after writing numerous papers in English 1900 I feel like I know a little bit more about the idea of rhetoric.

I found that as a course English 1900 primarily focused on the argumentative aspect of rhetoric, as most of the major graded writing pieces focused on this sector of rhetoric. Other aspects of the course however did focus on other aspects of rhetoric for example: this blog post that I am currently writing and the numerous other blog posts that I have written through out this first semester here at Saint Louis University. Throughout my time the amount of writing that I have done has really helped both my growth and understanding of rhetoric as a whole. The amount of practice I have had constructing and crafting argumentative style rhetorical papers has helped my growth as a writer. I have learned a lot about the  construction of an argumentative paper, and more specifically the organization of a rhetorical paper is the part of rhetoric which I think I’ve learned the most about.

            The biggest and probably most important thing I learned was the construction of an argumentative paper. I learned that the most important part of any paper is relating the topic sentences of each paragraph back to the thesis statement, and that the order of such paragraphs is crucial to the audiences understanding of your argument. The next most important thing is sources; a writer must establish his credibility to the audience through the use of credible and reliable sources. Not only must he find reliable sources, but the author must properly use and explain his sources to further support his argument as a whole. Following these steps is crucial to developing a well crafted argument, and make up the bulk of what I’ve learned about writing rhetoric in English 19000 this current semester. Helpful sites like those written by Dr. Gideon Burton really helped me to understand the canons of rhetoric as well. Sites like the forest by Dr. Burton really showed the proper ways to create a rhetorical paper. On top of explaining the canons of rhetoric the page also went into detail on Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. These three modes of persuasion are very important in regards to crafting a well-versed argumentative rhetorical paper.

            In the end I learned a lot about the strategies of rhetoric in my semester of English 1900 here at Saint Louis University. The practice I had while writing numerous rhetorical papers has helped grow my further understanding of the art of rhetoric. Looking back now it has been a very productive semester as a whole and I’ve both learned and grown immensely as a writer.