A corpus-aided approach for the teaching and learning of rhetoric in an undergraduate composition course for L2 writers

•Provides a model for implementing corpus-aided activities into L2 writing classrooms.•Displays the value of multiple small, specialized corpora for enabling contrastive corpus analysis.•Reports positive student attitudes towards corpus activities in the L2 writing classroom.

This paper illustrates a corpus-aided approach for the teaching and learning of rhetoric in an undergraduate writing course for second language writers. The twenty-one international students in the course read and analyzed texts produced by a local environmental group and an international mining company regarding a proposed copper mine in the U.S. southwest. The textual analysis was enhanced and supplemented by a series of activities using corpus data derived from collections of texts from the opposing groups. The contrastive analyses made possible through the study of texts and corpus data from the sharply distinct groups enabled students to notice, analyze, interpret, and discuss the meaningful and purposeful linguistic and rhetorical variation present in the texts, the corpus data, and the debate. This implementation of localized, specialized corpora comprised of texts with immediate relevance to the students' campus and community provides a means to incorporate corpus study in the writing classroom from a rhetorical perspective. This article details the principles guiding the design of the approach, explains the corpus-aided activities, reports students' attitudes to the use of corpus data in their academic writing classroom, and offers suggestions for implementing similar activities in L2 writing classrooms.