Practices of response in public speaking the transformation of revision techniques into oral feedback

ABSTRACT

The practices of response, which are considered an important part of Public Speaking at the second year of the undergraduate program of the Rhetoric Section at University of Copenhagen, are based on a close dialogue between written and oral rhetoric. This essay unveils how research on revision techniques in Composition has helped establish a response culture of both oral and written utterances that is carefully prepared already at the first year including receiving as well as giving feedback.

KEYWORDS:

• Public speaking
• feedback, response culture
• revision techniques

Notes

1. See Gerard Hauser, “Teaching Rhetoric: Or Why Rhetoric Isn’t Just Another Kind of Philosophy or Literary Criticism,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34 (2004): 39–53, and William Keith and Roxanne Mountford, “The Mt. Oread Manifesto on Rhetorical Education 2013,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 44 (2014): 1–5.

2. Keith and Mountford “The Mt. Oread Manifesto on Rhetorical Education 2013,” 2.

3. Linda Flower and John R. Hayes, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 367–368.

4. John R. Hayes and Linda S. Flower, “Writing Research and the Writer,” American Psychologist 41 (1986): 1106.

5. Hayes and Flower, “Writing Research and the Writer,” 1110.

6. See, for instance, Hayes and Flower, “Writing Research and the Writer,” 1109–10.

7. Nancy Sommers, “Between the Drafts,” The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook (ed. Edward P. J. Corbett, Nancy Myers, and Gary Tate. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000): 283.

8. Nancy Sommers, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” College Composition and Communication 31 (1980): 380.

9. Sommers, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” 379.

10. Linda Flower, John R. Hayes, Linda Carey, Karen Schriver, and James Stratman, “Detection, Diagnosis, and the Strategies of Revision,” College Composition and Communication 37 (1986): 27.

11. Hayes and Flower, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” 1112.

12. Øjvind Andersen, I retorikkens hage (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995): 223.

13. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1979): Book 10, 1, 2.

14. Quintilian: Book 10, 1, 2.

15. Quintilian: Book 2, 2, 8.

16. Quintilian: Book 10, 1, 25.

17. Quintilian: Book 10, 2, 18.

18. Eva Heltberg and Christian Kock, Skrivehåndbogen (København: Gyldendal, 1997): 272.

19. Robert Terrill, “Mimesis, Duality, and Rhetorical Education,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 41(2011): 311.

20. Terrill, “Mimesis, Duality, and Rhetorical Education,” 309.

21. In the rhetorical tradition three things were required from the students: a ready nature (natura), careful study (ars), and laborious exercise (usus). Natura means both talent and preparation in the studies propaideutic to rhetoric. Ars consisted of the activities of rhetorical criticism, and finally usus implied oral interpretation and imitation of canonic authors to invention and performance in progymnasmata and declamation exercises, over a period of years. See Jeffrey Walker, “What Difference a Definition Makes, or, William Dean Howells and the Sophist’s Shoes,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36 (2006): 149.

22. Hayes and Flower, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” 1108.

23. Katie Böhme, “Web-Based Rhetorical Training – A Virtual Impossibility? Problems and Perspectives of Improving Public Speaking Skills in Virtual Learning Environments,” Journal of Education, Informatics and Cybernetics (2009): 2. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267251996_Web-Based_Rhetorical_Training__A_Virtual_Impossibility_Problems_and_Perspectives_of_Improving_Public_Speaking_Skills_in_Virtual_Learning_Environments).

24. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word (London: Routledge, 1996): 71.

25. Keith and Mountford, “The Mt. Oread Manifesto on Rhetorical Education 2013,” 4.