Aristotle in the Classroom: Scaffolding the Rhetorical Situation

Preparing students for meaningful participation in democratic society begins with constructing arguments around issues important to them. Argumentative writing is important not only for students' abilities to enter the conversations on topics of individual, community, national, and international importance, but also for developing critical thinking and understanding of academic writing in general. This article describes a process for bringing rhetoric to the classroom for facilitation of students' writing fluency—formulating ideas and expressing them in writing. First, the author discusses helping students understand what rhetoric means. She then explains how to model Aristotle's triangle and the rhetorical square to scaffold construction of arguments.