Rhetorical Sensitivity In College Essay

Many students who do recognize the importance of rhetoric present a better writing in their academic essays. They consider variables such as clarity in his essays, better structure, organization, enough evidence, and cohesive paragraphs in general. According to Ede, Lisa S. “Rhetoric is a practical art that helps writers make effective choices within specific rhetorical situations.” In other words, understanding the basic elements of rhetoric such as audience, purpose, thesis and evidence help students to develop rhetorical sensitivity thereby meet the demands a good academic writing. Today, being rhetorical aware in writing is essential for college students in the writing process.

Rhetorical context refers to the circumstances that surround

Rhetorical sensitivity also includes a good thesis as one of the main ingredients that a writer must consider in an essay. Thesis must be a complete thought, specific, meaningful, arguable and relevant. Having this in mind, students are encouraged to think critically in their thesis sentence in order to develop a good essay assignment. As Gary D. Schmidt and William J. Vande Kopple mention in Rhetoric, “Each student has to decide. An as they decide, they usually try to convey a dominant mood or impression, an expression of which would constitute their thesis.” Students who have developed rhetorical sensitivity and already know their audience and their purpose draw on that information to create strong thesis. For example, if the student knows that his audiences are young children, that his purpose is to get children informed about how to protect themselves from the West Nile virus in a language that would be easy for them to understand so they can get the full message about the topic, furthermore, he wants to prove that by applying DEET repellent and wearing long sleeve shirts and pants kids will be protected against mosquito bites. Then a good thesis will be: “Kids should use DEET repellent and wear long-sleeve shirts and pants to protect themselves from mosquito bites. This very specific thesis leave a clear understanding on children. it is a complete thought, and it complies with the purpose of inform children, and at the same

Students who develop rhetorical sensitivity are able to evaluate their thesis and provide the right evidence necessary to prove it. Furthermore, the evidence should clearly support the thesis. The evidence in an essay depends upon what is your thesis about. Evidence can be in form of examples, facts, details, statistics, expert opinions, personal observations, anecdotes, quotations, graphs, etc. For instance, the student who is assigned to write an essay to inform parents about the West Nile virus might want to construct strong evidence, such as statistics about the cases of infection, death, etc. definition of the virus, background information about the virus, illustration of mosquitos, etc. Thus, If students do not include in their assignments the adequate supporting evidence, their assignments might result in weak essays. The audience might not get the point stayed in it and it might not appeal to it. On the other hand, irrelevant material in the assignments might cause the student to lose the central focus of the thesis and the purpose and put more emphasis in other secondary topics. By including the right evidence the audience will feel more connected, appeal, and engage with the