I read Sharon Crowley’s article “Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students” and chapter 7 involving prewriting techniques in Erika Lindemann’s “A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers”. Both touched on several ideas and suggestions regarding how to develop different ways of coming up with a topic, or thesis, as well as different questions to ask when attempting to create a good argument for your writing. Crowley really laid out the groundwork in how to ask good questions, when to ask them, and even what questions to ask based on the situation. What Lindemann did was share different techniques from a teacher’s perspective on how to get your ideas and thoughts out and then organized.
They both talked about the heuristic approach as discovery of something, or invention of something. Crowly connects invention to rhetoric in ways that lays out the ground work in discovering propositions and proofs or statements used to persuade audiences. It also helps to decide if a topic is worth writing about. Lindemann doesn’t get that much into detail but instead gives us techniques and strategies to help organize thoughts and ideas. To me, if I were writing a paper I would start with Lindemann’s techniques first, and then apply my ideas or topics to Crowley’s techniques.
Both readings had similarities to them because both shared ideas and helpful techniques in starting a research paper. However, I preferred Lindemann’s article more because, as a current student as well as a future teacher, I not only learned ways to make my writing better, I also learned ways of teaching these techniques to my future students. However, Crowley’s article also shed light on different key terms I was unaware of and provided very useful tools which will help me to develop my own thesis for my research paper. More specifically, her article has specific questions (Hermagoras’s Questions-Conjecture, Definition, Quality, and Procedure) that I should ask depending on which route I decide to go with my paper.
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