Rhetoric in Teaching

As much as rhetoric has informed my coursework as a student, it has informed my work as an instructor as well. Both as a teaching assistant and an Instructor of Record, my education in rhetoric has been integral to the way I develop and implement curricula in the classroom.

COM 220 Public Speaking 

More than any other course I have taught, the introduction to public speaking course has shown me how to integrate rhetorical scholarship with the instruction of practical skills. This course teaches students how to harness ancient rhetorical techniques and devices into use in speechwriting. As an instructor, I not only gained a much deeper understanding of these rhetorical techniques, but I learned how to evaluate them effectively. Because much of the job of the instructor of public speaking is in evaluation of speeches, a deep understanding of how to use rhetoric to deliver a persuasive, effective, and entertaining speech is essential.

COM 234 Public Debate

To begin the public debate course, students are taught many of the same public speaking skills that are learned in the introduction to public speaking course. From there, students learn to use those skills to assess not only persuasive ability in general but argumentative skill in particular. Students learn argumentative forms, debate technique, and rhetorical concepts like stasis theory to develop their skills in argumentation analysis. As an instructor, I particularly enjoyed this course because it showed clearly another practical use of the art of rhetoric in argumentation and debate.  

COM 333 Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

As an instructor of record, I was able to use this course to explore what I see as the most important aspects of rhetorical theory as it has developed over the relatively recent past. Starting with an overview of definitions of rhetoric from Aristotle and Plato, we quickly moved to more contemporary definitions of rhetoric from scholars like Bitzer, Ceccarelli, Condit, Goodnight, Harris, McGee, and others who have contributed to the contemporary rhetorical project. Through a review of scholarship in rhetorical theory, students learned the broad perspectives that a study of rhetoric can offer. At the same time, I learned what it is that I believe is most important about rhetoric as a tool for students. Namely, I was able to identify that I believe one of the most powerful things rhetoric can offer to students is a way of seeing the importance of language as a mode of relating to, analyzing, and ultimately constructing the worlds in which we live.

COM 436 Contemporary American Public Address 

Dr. Leah Ceccarelli’s contemporary American public address course taught me innumerable valuable skills in speech evaluation. In this course, students analyzed various speeches from former presidents, civil rights activists, and other public figures in an effort to see how they were able to be persuasive – or not – to their target audiences. As a teaching assistant, I was both able to learn from Dr. Ceccarelli’s lectures on speech evaluation, but I was able to engage further with the written materials of students to see what good speech analyses look like.