Cognition-Based Rhetorical Appeals and the Teaching of English Composition

Nowadays, there is an increasing awareness of the upset situation concerning English writing among college English teachers. More and more teachers come to expose themselves to various but effective approaches to teaching writing in order to remedy the unsatisfying teaching situation. Process and product approaches are most commonly used in English writing teaching. However, these two approaches are observed to represent a reaction against each other. Teachers who favor the application of product approach to teach writing assume that students can produce good writing once they have mastered vocabulary and sentence of the language. But in such writing instruction, composing process skills are given relatively small role and to a certain degree students' motivation and interests remain undeveloped. But when applying process approach to teach writing, more and more teachers realize the disadvantages of this so-called "enabling" approach. For the purpose of finding an effective model of writing instruction for students this thesis is intended to provide an introductory rhetorical model from cognitive perspective for teaching writing.