is not formulaic; rather, teachers guide students to write to fulfill purposes, address audiences and
respond to contexts. Teachers, specialists, and other school staff collaborate to plan long-term writing
assignments and expectations within courses and departments and across disciplines in specific grade
levels. Expectations for writing need not be the same in each setting, but understandings should be
established and well known. These include types of formal
and informal writing assignments, formatting conventions,
tools for providing feedback, and more.
Writing and reading should be consistently integrated.
The ICAS statement (2002) underscores this premise,
“No one disputes the connections between reading and
writing. We know that good writers are most likely careful
readers—and that most academic writing is a response to
reading” (15). To describe the process of evaluating what
writers say in light of how they say it, Bean, Chappell, and
Gillam (2014, 3) use the term reading rhetorically. “To
read rhetorically is 1) to read with attention to how your
purposes for reading may or may not match an author’s purposes for writing and 2) to recognize the
methods that authors use to try to accomplish their purposes.” For students to be able to write for
specific purposes and audiences (W.11–12.1f), many maintain they need to be able first to perceive
the rhetorical moves that professional writers make. As students “analyze not just what the texts say
but how they say it” (3), they establish the basis for their own writing—translating their analysis into a
well-reasoned stance and finally into a convincing argument.
According to Aristotle rhetoric is “the art of finding the available means of persuasion in a given
situation.” Bean, Chappell, and Gillam state “[b]y rhetorical, we mean ‘related to an intended effect’”
(9). What is it that the author intends the reader to believe? What effect does the author intend to
have on his or her audience? The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing defines rhetorical
knowledge generally as “the ability to analyze and act on understandings of audiences, purposes,
and contexts in creating and comprehending texts.” (See figure 7.6.) Argument is a key feature of the
CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy (and the CA ELD Standards) and was initially defined in Appendix A (NGA/
CCSSO 2010a) as distinct from persuasion. However, this ELA/ELD Framework takes the view that
persuasion and argument cannot be so easily separated and that the element of persuasion always
exists, even within the driest and densest of academic tomes. Lunsford, and others (2013, 284) state
“[w]hile every argument appeals to audiences in a wide variety of ways, it is often convenient to lump
such appeals into three basic kinds: emotional appeals (to
the heart), ethical appeals (about credibility or character),
and logical appeals (to the mind).” Aristotle defines these
three rhetorical appeals as ethos, the presentation of the
character and authority of the speaker; logos, the use
of words and arguments; and pathos, the appeal to the
emotions of the audience. Argumentative reading and
writing have many theoretical bases (Newell, and others
2011) and forms, such as Toulmin (familiar to many who
teach Advanced Placement Language) that includes claims,
grounds or data, warrants, backing, conditions of rebuttal,
and qualifier (Toulmin 1964). The three text types for writing
enumerated in the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy—argument,
informative/explanatory, and narrative—are all informed
by these and other notions of argument and rhetoric. All
support students’ success in writing.
Expectations for writing need
not be the same in each setting,
but understandings should be
established and well known.
These include types of formal and
informal writing assignments,
formatting conventions, tools for
providing feedback, and more.Writing and reading should
be consistently integrated.
The ICAS statement (2002)
underscores this premise, “No
one disputes the connections
between reading and writing.
We know that good writers are
most likely careful readers—
and that most academic
writing is a response to
reading.”Grades 9 to 12 Chapter 7 | 689