The persuasive power of the English language emerges from its richness and variation. This unit introduces students to rhetorical theory as a resource for the creative construction of meaning. Students will learn to discover topics, arrange ideas, and analyse the delivery of arguments across a variety of contexts. We examine print, visual media, political debates and engage in virtual exchanges with universities around the world.

This is a fully online unit of study. It focuses on advanced rhetorical reasoning and the theory, construction, and delivery of sound arguments, which are critical to success in the university and the workplace. Designed to improve writing and critical thinking abilities, the unit teaches students to craft persuasive, ethical, and engaging arguments. It will focus on the production and reception of arguments across a range of genres, including digital environments. Online tutorials feature collaborative writing and editing exercises on global, participatory writing platforms.

This unit will introduce students to contemporary theories and practices of rhetoric, examining the work of Kenneth Burke and Chaïm Perelman, among others. It will trace the development of contemporary rhetoric from the classical era, comparing these approaches through examples of social, political, and popular rhetoric across a range of genres. Students will develop a better understanding of the relationship between rhetoric and writing and how to apply rhetorical principles to the analysis, interpretation and production of a range of texts.

What do great poets, preachers and politicians have in common? Using case studies of enduring persuasive texts from the pulpit to the courtroom to the concert hall, this unit introduces students to rhetorical hermeneutics as a method of interpretation. The unit extends their ability to interrogate and think critically about various text types and their affective qualities. It cultivates intensive and effective research and reporting practices, through which students develop discipline-based inquiry questions to effectively discover, invent, produce, and deliver their own arguments.

This unit teaches the fundamentals of academic writing. Frequent, short writing assignments are designed to help students engage with the writing process at the sentence and paragraph levels and and to make appropriate style, grammar, punctuation, and syntax choices. Students will learn how to research a topic, document sources in keeping with academic honesty principles, and edit and revise their own writing, as well as the writing of others. This UoS is appropriate for both native and non-native English speakers and offers a solid foundation for academic writing in any discipline.

Effective communication in the modern workplace involves more than the production or reproduction of formulaic documents. To be persuasive, communication must be tailored to address the needs of differing audiences while sustaining a coherent and credible corporate narrative. This unit teaches the concepts of rhetorical awareness and user-centered design to enable you to craft a range of audience-focused, persuasive speeches, documents and visual texts for an increasingly technologized workplace.

Using Wikipedia as a writing platform, you will learn to write for a global readership that constitutes a large proportion of the world's population. Your digital and critical literacies will improve as you proofread and copy edit, and evaluate the quality and reliability of information and sources.

This OLE teaches research-based, practical strategies for improving the persuasiveness of key self-promotion documents, and successful interview strategies. You will learn to write credible online profiles for professional networking sites such as Linked-in, and effective applications for scholarships, grants, and employment opportunities.

In this unit you will produce knowledge for Wikipedia audiences around the globe. You will write across networks, negotiate various discourse communities, and contribute to and draw from creative commons resources while increasing the number of diverse voices that contribute to networked knowledge.