Teaching Language Awareness in Rhetorical Choice

Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jul 2004

Teaching Language Awareness in Rhetorical Choice

David Kaufer ; Suguru Ishizaki Carnegie Mellon University ; Jeff Collins ; Pantelis Vlachos Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract

This article introduces an IText system the authors built to enhance student practice in language awareness within commonly taught written genres (e.g., self-portraits, profiles, scenic writing, narratives, instructions, and arguments). The system provides text visualization and analysis that seek to increase students’ sensitivity to the rhetorical and whole-text implications of the small runs of language they read and write. The authors describe the way the system can create possibilities for classroom discourse and discussion about student writing that seem harder to reproduce in traditional writing classrooms. They also describe the limitations of the current system for wide-scale use and its future prospects.