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 contains ways for linking composition theory to persuasion and argumentation.  The author accentuates roles for listeners, independent readers, and discussers by honing in on differences between writing workshops 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 composition workshops.  “Implementing Paradigms, Expectations, and Roles,” describes four phases of composition workshops and explains how they work together to influence quality of writing performance.  Chapter three offers suggestions for making authentic performance assessments.  The end of each chapter is devoted to listening principles of performance related to that chapter.  Diagrammatic charts are included to facilitate understanding of functional relationships among process paradigms.  Emphasis is on practicing listening, independent reading, and discussing which should generate possibilities for discerning ideas for individual topics.  This facilitates thinking required for integrating information from several areas of study into content of essays.

Alvenice Brown, Ed. D. was educated in the public schools of Portsmouth, Virginia.  She was graduated from Hampton University in 1952 with a B.S. degree in English.  Other degrees earned include M.A. in speech from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and an Ed.D. from New York University, where she studied under Gordon Pradl, Neil Postman, James Britton, and Geoffrey Summerfield.  She served as chairperson of English in Pompano Beach, Florida, and in Portsmouth, Virginia.  In Portsmouth she also served as chairperson for improvement of reading in high schools.  She taught English in Jamaica, New York in junior and senior high schools.  She retired from NSU in VA and U of M.