Customer Reviews

Office Of Assertion: An Art Of Rhetoric For Academic Essay

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There are lots of books on writing, but Scott Crider wrote a book aimed to help college students understand why they write (to learn, explore, and persuade) and how they should write.

He follows Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion ..." (5), and then suggests how to "discover" arguments, how to organize a paper (he advocates replacing the "5-paragraph-essay" with the six-part (not paragraph) "Classical Oration"), how to use language to say what you mean ("Style"), and how to evaluate and rework (and rework and ...) what you have written, returning at the end to his opening point that "rhetoric moves an audience" and good rhetoric moves an audience--as it has already moved the rhetor--toward that which is true.

This is a gem of a book, not a word, sentence, or paragraph out of place, and every facet cut to lighten the student's way.

A fine little text on rhetoric. It is a must read for all undergraduates before they write their first academic essay. Students are introduced to the basic meaning and understanding of rhetoric beyond its misuse in today's media.

This little book will prove a classic. It shapes Rhetoric into a most useful tool for facing down the academic essay. Clear and spare, it's a keeper.

I've use this book for several semesters, and it is the handiest, most concise, and most illuminating text I've seen. Far too many comp textbooks are full of trendy drivel about free-writing, process writing, etc..., as well as being stuffed with silly useless graphics. Consequently, the texts cost $70 or more, and they are hardly opened. Do your students a favor, and have them go refer back to the ideals of classical rhetoric. If they master the skills in this book, they'll be ready to handle the demands of actual academic writing.

Scott Crider's book is a model of economy. Forget expensive books filled with trite essays and flashy pictures, this slender volume is solid meat from beginning to end. Crider moves seamlessly through his chapters on invention, organization, style, and re-vision, constantly cross-referencing his material throughout. The chapter on organization is particularly good, providing practical and well-conceived strategies to escape the limits of the five-paragraph essay. Crider's book produces thoughtful in-class discussion as well, and for that alone, I am thankful.

I've been using Crider's little book this semester to teach my introduction to composition classes, and the wonderful thing is that such an inexpensive and brief book can pack in so much of classical rhetorical theory and translate it for students in the twenty-first century.

On its own the book would probably be a hair too technical for most classes, but having students dwell on a chapter for a few class days, accompanied by exercises in online environments, has been dynamite. My students this semester are making revision moves and thinking in sophisticated terms about their practices of invention and revision that have me convinced that, for my own interactive style of composition teaching, Crider's book is just what the doctor ordered.

140 small pages of brilliant recommendations and analysis. After the first chapter (Intro), I was still a reluctant reader. Thereafter, I underlined furiously. This book should be required reading for high school English A/P teachers and all college students. High school students preparing for the SAT college essay would do well to absorb the recommendations in this book because following its advice will bump them from 10 1/2 to 12.

It is a delight to read and will affect your writing and advice to others. Highly recommended.

For anyone who has taught writing seriously as a process of human responsiveness to reality, this book will seem simply silly. It is a throwback to a rigid conception of reality as having only one meaning, only one mode of expression (and if your mode does not conform to mine, beware). Not only is the style of writing pretentious in the extreme, the student example which is cited throughout the book contains a huge, really huge, compositional mistake, which makes me wonder just how much classical rhetoric depends on a priori bias. The book is impossible to teach because it assumes that students already have in mind the basics of writing as process, an odd assumption since neither ISI nor the school from which this author comes values anything as modern as process. It sounds too much like progress. One thing is clear: no progress in writing will be achieved by using this book.