Dr. Nana Ariel

Let's Talk About It:
Learning Through Speech in Academia and Beyond

Students and teachers speak all the time: in class presentations, collegial conversations, conferences and public lectures. Speech is a primary means of communication, but it is first and foremost a tool for thinking: processing information, enhancing the understanding of ideas, and developing new ones. Just like writing, speech is an essential skill that has a crucial role in almost any academic activity.

This project offers an innovative rhetorical approach to learning, based on the deep roots of ancient rhetoric. It aims to promote the effectiveness of speech both as a thinking and learning method and as a communication channel, on the levels of individual learners and the larger academic community. It explores and implements rhetorical techniques that improve the cognitive process of learning, promote clear reasoning and argumentation, and develop memory and delivery skills. It also strives to strategize innovative formats of conferencing, and to elevate new speaking norms in conferences at all rhetorical levels (definition of goals, lecture time-planning and style, and the use of presentation technologies).

About Nana:

I am a writer, researcher and lecturer in theoretical and practical rhetoric at Tel Aviv University, and previously a Fulbright post-doctoral Visiting Scholar at Harvard University.

Prof. Ruth Amossy (Project’s PI) is a world-renowned thinker in the field of rhetoric and head of ADAAR Group for the study of rhetoric, discourse analysis, and argumentation.