The greater part of course time is devoted to oral activities, but writing is also an important component.
The course deals with the following:
- rhetorical strategies, patterns, and structures
- basis concepts of rhetoric
- rhetorical figures
- adaptation to the audience and audience contact
- stage fright
- textual and sentential structure
- connections between written and spoken rhetoric.
Oral tasks:
- a five-minute individual descriptive presentation on a general topic
- a fifteen-minute individual persuasive presentation on a topic related to the student’s programme
- an oral rhetorical debate on a controversial topic
- a three-minute off-the-cuff speech on one random topic out of a number of given topics.
Written tasks:
- two descriptions intended for two different non-experts of a complicated issue in technology or science.
- an argumentative text
- a short speech analysis.
Procedures: response and process writing are used. Students receive a response to their presentations and written texts from both fellow-students and the teacher. Students will work both individually and in groups.