College Board. (2000). Writing a ticket to work...or a ticket out: A survey of business leaders. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf

Writing in College

• In what ways and to what extent is the writing you do in college different than the writing you did in high school?

• How can the writing you do in college prepare you for the next steps in your professional life?– Focus on content areas– Learn the genres that matter– Grants, scholarships, applications, resume building

Persuasive Communication

• Rhetoric: The ability in any particular case to see the available means of persuasion (Aristotle, The Rhetoric). – An ability• Can be developed

– More options to accomplish your goals

– Multiple means of persuasion• Be clear about your purpose• Know your audience• Use ethos, logos, and pathos

Purpose

• What do I want my audience to know?• What do I want my audience to feel?• What do I want my audience to do?

Writing as discovery

• Our ideas change as we write• We gain content knowledge• Our purpose can become clearer as we write

and revise

Questions to help you develop your audience awareness

•What do your readers know already about your issue?•What do they need to know?•What would they like to know?•What common background knowledge and experience do

your readers share?•What are the values of the social groups they belong to?•What actions can they take in response to your writing?•What opinions do they already have about your subject?•Are audience members interested, hostile, distracted,

friendly, or bored?•What other characteristics of your audience could impact

your writing?

Means of Persuasion

• Ethos• Logos• Pathos

Ethos = credibility

• What counts as credibility differs among groups of people

• O'Keefe (1990) defined credibility as "judgments made by a perceiver concerning the believability of a communicator"

• credibility is in the eye of the beholder

• The two most important elements in establishing credibility are expertise and trustworthiness

Credibility is subject to change over time

What will compromise your credibility in the short and long term?

• A single spelling error on a resume of cover letter could seriously undermine your competitiveness in applying for an internship or job.

Two kinds of credibility

Extrinsic: what people know about you before they read your work or

hear you speak

Intrinsic: what we do within a communication setting through

our actions.

Putting ethos to work in your writing• Know your material• Cite evidence (Reinard, J.C. (1988) Human Communication Research,

15,3-59).

• Share your interest, experience, and expertise• Have your reader’s best interest in mind• Identify similarities with your reader• If you lack extrinsic credibility increase your reader’s

involvement with the topic, which will help focus them on the topic more than the messenger (Petty and

Cacioppa, 1986).