Writing to Persuade

This course will help students develop more nuanced language skills for writing opinions, critiques and commentaries in Spanish. They will learn effective grammatical structures and rhetorical styles of persuasion in Spanish, not only by practicing a wide variety of writing modes, but also through reading, analyzing and discussing effective works of commentary and opinion. Students will learn to compose both formal and informal modes: love letters and break-up letters; job/academic applications; letters to the editor; critical commentaries on films, performances and works of literature; and opinion pieces/blog entries on current issues in politics and culture. The final component of the course will be focused on a more fluid literary mode, as students experiment with the indirect persuasions of fiction by writing a short story in a workshop format.

Required Text: Course materials will be provided online.