Although first enunciated in 1827 by Samuel Newman, the modes of discourse--narration, description, exposition, and argument--were not very popular until formulated in 1866 and presented in the United States in a rhetoric textbook in 1885. After 1890, they were gradually accepted by the most influential rhetoricians of the day, and their use in…

Describes how the four traditional kinds of writing (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) are used in advertising and suggests ways that advertising and the four modes may be used to teach composition. (DD)

Describes how a writing teacher has his students write about one object in the four modes (description, narration, argumentation, and exposition) as a means of learning about writing and writing to learn. Suggests that students learn about their topics when they write about them in the four modes. (SR)

Presents the journalistic essay as both appealing to college composition students and helpful in teaching them writing clarity, accuracy, organization, and the integration of narration, description, and exposition. (DD)

The purpose of this study was to determine what effects the Christensen Rhetoric Program, a method of teaching sentence and paragraph development, had upon the attitudes of 43 black college freshmen just entering Tennessee State University and upon the persistence of these students in using free modifiers after a lapse of time and instruction.…

Retention of prose is examined as it is affected by (1) outlines as advanced organizers; (2) preexperimental familiarity with the material; and (3) text genre. Findings are discussed in the context of current theories in cognitive psychology, particularly those of structure, organization, and representation of knowledge and prose. (Author/GK)

The descriptions of a terrorist attack on a Paris restaurant--an audio recording of a juvenile eyewitness, an audio recording of a researcher reading a text about the event, and a newspaper account--are compared for discourse characteristics. (MSE)

Analyzes changes in content and shifts in emphasis in rhetoric texts from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. Suggests that the current-traditional approach to the teaching of rhetoric used in most college classrooms has a strong similarity to that advocated by early rhetoricians. (RBW)

Presents evidence that written responses to modality develop from a homogeneous writing quality to a more heterogeneous writing quality with some modes systematically favored over others." (Author)

An analysis of descriptive and narrative passages written by 45 first-semester college freshmen early in the semester suggests that mean T-unit length is not a stable individual trait either within the descriptive mode or across description and narration. (GT)

To examine the textual features that distinguish descriptions and fictional narratives in the products of eight- and nine-year old writers, a study analyzed 14 compositions (seven descriptions and seven fictional narratives) written by 14 third grade students. The samples were rated by two qualified professionals working in writing research,…

This is the fourth and final report in a series dealing with the impact of the modes of discourse (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) on written syntactic complexity at the elementary school level. The first three reports dealt in turn with the three grade levels involved in the study (third, fourth, and fifth grades). This…

Presents two assignments that are designed to help students (at the high school and college levels) to develop a sense of place while building skills to improve their narrative writing. Includes the assignment sheet. Describes how students create a Michigan Travel Guide from their final drafts. (SR)

Over the last 3 decades or so, English and its related disciplines of Rhetoric and Composition have adopted new tools of research--tools other than the traditional ones of narrative and description. These other tools are empirical or scientific, those that are common to the social sciences, including experiments, case studies, surveys, and…