What is rhetoric?
Rhetoric is the skill of using literary techniques and language to make messages clear, convincing, or powerful. People use rhetoric when they want to persuade others, explain ideas, or make their writing or speaking more interesting.
How will studying rhetoric improve my students’ writing?
Your students are probably already using many of the devices in this writing program without realizing it. But strong writers don’t depend on luck to sound clever or organized. By closely studying the devices in this book, your students will gain the tools they need to be intentionally and consistently skillful writers.
How is Rhetorical Devices organized?
The student workbook splits the devices into four categories:
- Strategy: devices that help the writer decide how to approach their reader. Examples include understatement, metaphor, and allusion.
- Organization: devices that improve the flow of information and the arrangement of sentences and paragraphs. Examples include parallelism, enumeratio, and apostrophe.
- Style: devices that help the writer share their personality and attitudes toward the subject and the reader. Examples include zeugma, epithet, and hyperbaton.
- Analysis: devices that help the reader better examine what they read. Examples include personification, amplification, and parataxis.
What are the exercises in Rhetorical Devices like?
Exercises range from looking for real-world examples of rhetorical devices in newspapers, magazines, and blogs; to studying how devices are used effectively in famous speeches, advertisements, political campaigns, and literature; to students creating their own examples.
Every exercise emphasizes the students’ use of the device to make their writing better, not simply naming and defining the device or spotting it in a passage.
Which student grade level is this book best suited for?
The activities in this book are appropriate for students anywhere from 9th to 12th grade who are ready to move beyond basic grammar and mechanics.
Students enrolled in AP* Language and Composition and other advanced or college-level English language arts classes will especially benefit from this program.
Why should my class use this book?
Although most large-scale, standardized assessments don’t test rhetoric directly, almost all tests with a writing section require a working knowledge of rhetoric if a student wants to earn a high score on the essay.
Knowing how to intentionally use rhetorical devices separates acceptable writing from truly excellent writing, helping all college-bound students both make it into higher education and succeed academically when they get there.