Rhetoric and Composition/Teacher's Handbook/Rhetorical Analysis. Designing a Unit of Study for Teaching Rhetorical Analysis Have you ever planned a trip to a new destination?
If you have, you know that it requires having some knowledge of where you are going, what you would like to do when you get there, where you will stay, and how you will get back home. Designing a unit on teaching rhetorical analysis is not so different from planning a trip. The assignment you give your students plots out the destination at which you want your students to arrive and this becomes their initial "map" for the task. Understanding the rhetorical vehicles of logos, ethos and pathos help them on their way to analyzing a text. The Planning Stage Guide Questions to Design the Unit (Samples) Creating a Unit Timeline: The key to teaching rhetorical analysis is to start small. Visual Analysis Just a few of the mediums to consider using here include magazine advertisements, commercials, films, and news clips. Close Reading Practice, Practice, Practice Some questions to ask: Sample 1.
Writing rhetoric. A rhetorical analysis of a text aims to make visible the ways in which the writer attempts to persuade his or her audience.
It includes a consideration of how the purpose and the occasion shape the text and of the ways in which the author attempts to persuade his or her chosen audience. The goal of teaching rhetorical analysis is to lead the students to a better critical awareness of how persuasive writing works, and a better understanding of how these strategies can be deployed in their own writing. If you’ve never taken a class in rhetoric it’s a good idea to analyze a couple of essays yourself to get a sense of how your students might begin to tackle it. At the beginning of the semester give students a handout describing the rhetorical triangle and some of the key appeals that are made in an argument.
(See below for examples) For every reading assignment ask them to identify the rhetor, the message and the audience, and some ways in which the author tries to appeal to the audience. My Torrid Love Affair with Rhetorical Analysis - Jessica O'Hara. The first writing assignment I ever taught was a rhetorical analysis of an advertisement, and I have been obsessing over the infamous "ad analysis" ever since.
Undoubtedly, the origin of my zeal must come from my first job as an advertising agency copywriter, a job I left just days before I started teaching. Even though the rhetorical ad analysis paper can be frustrating for teacher and students alike, I am convinced that when students master this writing assignment, they have come a long way toward understanding academic analytical writing. Over the years, I have recognized that students struggle so much with this analysis assignment because in high school they were often rewarded for summarizing a text well.
Indeed, many students have difficulty imagining what I mean by analysis. I realized that this conceptual problem actually starts on the sentence level, so I developed a handout to show what analytical sentences do. Rhetorical Analysis in Three Easy Steps « WSU Teaching. Logic and inference through song « Docere Est Discere.
Spurred by my recent foray into ideas for increasing critical thinking, here’s an idea that I think combines a lot of different ideas, including critical thinking and logical inference, into a skill-building activity that engages a virtually universal student interest: music.
The text I will use for the activity I have in mind is Jonathan Coulton’s fabulously bittersweet song Blue Sunny Day. I suspect that this activity could be repeated with other songs, but I chose this song for several reasons. The first is that the song itself is musically upbeat – peppy and in a major setting* – and that will help engage students from the get-go. The second is that the tone of the music does not actually match the tone of the lyrics, which are slightly ironic but in the end a little depressing. The third – and perhaps the most important – is that the song is quite ambiguous. *Sorry, my music theory roots come out from time to time. Like this: Like Loading... Analysis.