In spring 2014, I taught a Composition II course, designed to improve student writing through constructing and critiquing arguments. Our class examined the rhetoric of sustainability, using guided readings in several topics in sustainability to refine skills in argumentation, inquiry-based research, and the use of technology to communicate effectively and efficiently.

 

To help students recognize and evaluate the rhetorical situation of texts, I encouraged students to think about the problems inherent in discussing “sustainability,” and especially to be cautious around the potent rhetoric of “nature” and “green” marketing. Nature, a most pervasive means of persuasion, has saturated contemporary culture, and so for our first unit focused on greenwashing and the problems “nature” poses for sustainable thinking and writing. By examining the rhetoric of the natural, students were able to isolate and demonstrate mastery of concepts like rhetorical analysis, evaluation of ethos, argumentation, logic and fallacies. This encouraged students to think critically as they moved into the following units, which explored food, farming, and waste respectively. 

 

As in my Composition I course, I encourage students to think of writing as a "space." One location in which writing took place was on Student Blogs. Students were asked to respond to various prompts, to discuss readings, and to freewrite in each unit. Their papers moved from an analysis of a single source in paper 1 to a comparison of two sources in paper 2, and in papers 3 and 4, students developed research questions and topics out of readings.

 

Their final exam asked them to create an anthology out of their work and explain how the anthology reflected contemporary problems facing sustainability. This encouraged students to participate in the blogs throughout the course, because these assignments had a clear outcome, compiling a portfolio which encompassed their journey and growth as a second-semester writing student. [Click here for the Course Syllabus.]