Persuasion and Argumentation: Teaching Composition (K-13)

Listening, Reading, Discussing, and Writing in Composition Workshops extends"How May We Help Students Write More Coherent Texts?" presented at CCCC, 1988, St. Louis, Missouri.¿ Written for an audience of teachers, parents,and individuals interested in development of language abilities, it containsways for linking composition theory to persuasion and argumentation.¿ The author accentuates roles for listeners,independent readers, and discussers by honing in on differences between writingworkshops and composition workshops.¿Grounded in expectations for performance, chapter one, "Paradigms, Expectations, and Roles for Composition Workshops," defines persuasion,argumentation, fluency, clarity, and accuracy as embraced in compositionworkshops.¿ "Implementing Paradigms, Expectations, and Roles," describes four phases of composition workshops andexplains how they work together to influence quality of writingperformance.¿ Chapter three offerssuggestions for making authentic performance assessments.¿ The end of each chapter is devoted tolistening principles of performance related to that chapter.¿ Diagrammatic charts are included tofacilitate understanding of functional relationships among processparadigms.¿ Emphasis is on practicinglistening, independent reading, and discussing which should generatepossibilities for discerning ideas for individual topics.¿ This facilitates thinking required forintegrating information from several areas of study into content of essays.