Have you ever remained parked in your car in order to hear the end of a song or a news story? This is called a driveway moment (Pine, 2007). Kenneth Burke refers to this fulfilling of our desires, the desire for the conclusion, as an “appetite” that humans have for form (Burke, 1931). Songs have form, movies have form, literature has form. As teachers of the Basic Communication Course, we should recognize this appetite for form and incorporate form into our syllabi. Form in the way Kenneth Burke describes—form that has one part leading to the anticipation of another part—is applied via Burke’s pentad to the Basic Communication Course syllabus in this essay. The idea is that students ought to be gratified by the sequence of the syllabus as well as informed by the matter of the syllabus, thus inducing driveway moments for students of the Basic Communication Course
