Darren's Textbook Reviews

My first book is: Envision: Persuasive Writing in a Visual World by Christine L. Alfano and Alyssa J. O’Brien.

As its title suggests, Envision is trying to do two things at once—teach the basic skills of rhetorical writing, and look at how the world uses visual arguments. It actually rather skillfully intertwines a study of the two. Throughout it’s nine chapters, it teaches aspects of writing arguments, beginning with the basics and steadily adding complexity as it goes along—chapter one explains rhetoric as a basic concept, chapter two covers appeals to logic and emotion, chapter three covers perspectives, and so on, covering the same kind of material other rhetorics would cover—(for example, when we get to research and using outside sources, there is a section on avoiding plagiarism). The difference between this book and other rhetorics is that it intertwines looking at standard rhetorical practices with looking at how visual media uses these practices, and has assignments which require students to analyze how these practices affect their everyday lives. Chapter 1 looks at cartoons, comic strips and editorial cartoons, Chapter 2 looks at advertisements, Chapter 3 photographs, Chapter 4 Propoganda Posters, Chapter 5 Magazines, Journals, and Webites, Chapter 6 Movie Trailers, Chapter 7 Oral and Power Point Presentations, Chapter 8 Designing Visual Arguments and Websites, Chapter 9 Writing for Public and Professional Communities.

Positives: This is definitely a book geared toward teaching a composition class that emphasizes visual media. It is visually appealing, smaller than most rhetorics, and uses a website for addition resources. Basically, a class could be structured around just using this book. It comes with its own assignments, most of which would fulfill the paper assignments required for English 1000, or could easily be tweaked to do so. The website has suggested activities for each chapter, suggested assignments for papers, suggested pre-writing activities, and even has peer-review sheets you can print up online. The website includes links to other sites which have the visual media being discussed in the particular chapter.

Negatives: The reason why it is such a slim volume is because it does not include essays from actual published writers. The website does have readings that the students can look at, but for the most part they are examples of other student essays. The website does have links to a few published articles, but the few that I clicked on did not take me to the site that it was supposed to—a few of the sites were blocked or no longer available. It also seems like some of the visual media that is used in the book (and the website) are already outdated—the first cartoon in chapter one is about Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial, which already seems like old news. It seems that for a book like this to be most effective, it would need to be updated frequently.

Despite the negatives, this book could still be used. I wish it had more readings in it, but I suppose readings can be found elsewhere if needed. I think that, even if I don’t use it, that I will probably steal a lot of ideas, and a lot of activities, from it.

The second book I looked at was Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students by Sharon Crowley and Debrah Hawhee. I was interested in this book because I wondered if taking an “old school” approach to teaching rhetoric, one which really focused on the classical approach, would work. This book gives a history of ancient rhetoric, then covers the basics in great detail, looking at stases, Aristotle’s Topical System, Logical Proof, Ethical Proof, Pathetic Proof, Extrinsic Proofs, Arrangement, Delivery of the discourse. All along, it cleverly uses modern day examples to illustrate that these ancient concepts are still used today. It incorporates readings, but generally just short ones, used primarily to illustrate the classical concepts, and has several exercises throughout the book. It does not have formal assignments, but assignments could easily be derived from the chapters.

I like the book, but I’m not sure how I would use it. I like the detailed explanations of these concepts, done in a straightforward way with good examples. I like how it refers to classical Greek tragedies to make some of its points. While I would like to read it myself, I’m not sure that the students would get as much out of it—not that it is over their heads, but that it would probably just be boring to them. It also seems like it may be advanced for what we need to accomplish in College Comp—we’ve had discussions about how much these classical ideas are useful, and how much they would just confuse the student. This book goes beyond basic. It explains the basics in such detail that it may be more than the students need in order to understand the concept and use it in their papers. Again, I could see stealing a lot of ideas from it, and even using the chapters to help create mini-lectures on the classical concepts. However, I again am finding that I wish the book had more readings.

If money were not an object, I would find a more standard rhetoric with readings, and combine it with both Envision and Ancient Rhetorics. That way I could have a balanced approach which considers both old school rhetoric and new visual media. However, money being an issue, I’m leaning toward getting the standard rhetoric, such as the Writing Analytically with Readings (which we all just received copies of about a month ago), and using these other books as a resource for teaching classical rhetoric and visual media.