Practice rhetorical analysis questions

Agenda, Wednesday Oct. 30

Main Objective: Outline a Practice Rhetorical Analysis

Group Work – continued (10 mins)

Discussion

Practice Rhetorical Analysis

Closing

HW: Turn bullet points into a Shitty First Draft in your

notebook. We will exchange and discuss these in class

tomorrow.

Round One:

If you were to make a claim about the overall

effectiveness of the Seattle Times argument, what would

it be?

What reasons would you give?

What evidence would you give for those reasons?

What suggestions would you give for improving this

argument?

Round Two:

What are the strengths of this essay?

What evidence (examples) can you give?

What are the weaknesses of this essay?

What evidence (examples) can you give? (Remember, in

this case evidence could also mean the absence of

something).

Round Three:

What evidence do you see of the author’s use of pathos?

(trying to evoke emotion in readers in order to convince

them)?

Does the author use pathos effectively, or does he go

overboard/underboard with it?

What evidence do you see of the author’s use of logos

(using hard, cold facts, figures and statistics, and/or

logically reasoning)?

Does the author use logos effectively, or does he go

underboard/overboard with it?

What evidence do you see of the author’s use of ethos

(convincing through his own credibility. This could be

referring to his own background as a subject matter

expert, or pointing out all the evidence he has

researched/gathered to make his point)?

Does the author use ethos effectively, or does he go

overboard/underboard with it?

Conclusion: Revisit your claim about the overall

effectiveness of the argument. Now can you make it

more nuanced and specific?