Red Pen Rhetoric Analysis

Some people have been lucky enough to experience the privilege of being educated. Whether or not one has been educated, he or she knows education is an important life aspect because it allows people to learn valuable life lessons and skills. Everyone has their own views on which teaching style is the best, including Mr. Steve Wyrick. In an argumentative essay entitled, “Red-Pen Rhetoric: Looking at the Response to Student Writing in Freshman College Composition Courses,” graduate student and teacher assistant, Mr. Steven T. Wyrick, focuses on what he believes to be the best relationship between student and teacher. This relationship, known as co-constituency, is one that Wyrick believes will help students in writing courses to develop their …show more content…
His purpose is to inform instructors and students about the relationship they share, it is important for both to know about the relationship. Wyrick states how the first step of obtaining a co-constituent relationship is the consideration of “producing an essay in a writing course a rhetorical situation” (2). A rhetorical situation means that the student cannot only learn from the instructor, but the instructor can also learn from the student. Co-constituency is needed in order to allow a rhetorical situation to work, which is why Wyrick focuses an entire part of his paper to explaining what one is. Wyrick then focuses on how students should view their writing instructor as a sage. He believes that students must understand that the only way to improve their writing is by entering into “dialogue with those who have more experience writing” (5). The form of dialogue some teachers use is simply writing margin notes about the MUGS of a student’s paper, but not the actual content of the paper. While other methods of dialogue, such as conferencing, allow the student to think about the content of his or her paper, which will help him or her to develop a better academic