Rhetoric is Everywhere

First-Year Writing Semester | Summer 2025 | Online, Asynchronous

Course Description

First-Year Writing, at its core, is a course centered on writing, which is a practice of a lifetime. You’ll never be “done” with learning how to write. The time we spend together in this course represents less than a blink of time in the scope of your overall life (over the course of a 14-week semester, we would have approximately 32 hours together; that’s less than one week at a full-time job), but the overall aim of this course is to introduce you to a framework for reading and writing rhetorically. You should leave this class with the understanding that rhetoric is everywhere. We’ll practice what it means to determine the right means of communication at the right time. You won’t practice every type of writing that you’ll encounter during your time at Boston College or in your life; that’s impossible! What you will do in this course is practice the skills you need to read and respond to the world around you rhetorically. Ideally, you’ll finish this course confident in your ability to respond to a variety of rhetorical situations, no matter what your life looks like beyond this course. By the end of this course, you should have the confidence that you can figure out what to do in any writing situation.

Deliverables

  • Course Foundations

    These activities will orient you to the course and allow you to meet members of our writing community:

    What’s in my bag? Pulling from scholarship on literacy and identity, this activity asks you to create a short video about what’s in your bag and how its contents reveal your identity. 

    Individualized Course Completion Plan: You’ll draw up a plan that outlines your personal goals and articulates how those align with the expectations for the course. 

    Syllabus Quiz: You’ll take a quiz on Canvas that covers the content of the course syllabus. You must pass this quiz before you can move forward in the course. You have unlimited attempts to pass the quiz.

  • Why is this Funny?

    You need to complete three out of four assigned Why is This Funny?  activities. You will choose something that made you laugh in the last week or so— this could be a TikTok, Instagram Reel, YouTube video, series episode, movie, podcast, something you read, etc. 


    You’ll share what made you laugh and explain why. In doing so, you’ll actually be performing a rhetorical analysis— exploring how the creator conveys a message and influences the audience to laugh. 

  • Substack Project

    You’ll write a piece of long-form nonfiction, in the style of a Substack post, around a topic of your choosing. You’ll engage in multiple steps, including: reading, library research, outlining, drafting, peer feedback, and revision/editing.

  • Metacognitive Letter

    At the midpoint of the course, you’ll write a metacognitive letter where you’ll think deeply about and communicate your areas of strength and growth as a writer, connecting your thoughts to the work you are doing in the course.

  • Final Portfolio

    In lieu of a final exam, the First-Year Writing Program at Boston College has students compile a final writing portfolio where you curate your writing and reflect on how your writing and how you as a writer have grown. For this course, you’ll publish your Substack post and provide an annotated version of your piece where you detail how you incorporated feedback from your instructor and peers and how your project has changed.