Understanding and using rhetoric will most likely be new to
you. Rhetoric or rhetorical devices is a certain way the author tries to convey
his or her argument. You already know a few: allusion, imagery, metaphor, and alliteration.
Before, you were expected to explain or summarize a text and write commentary
about the text. Now, you will be expected to integrate and distinguish rhetoric
or rhetorical devices into your own writing and identify them in the writing of
others. I know, you ACTUALLY have to work in this class. But let me tell a secret:
from now on, you will be working hard in all of your classes. Junior year is
just the start of it; the need for effort will follow you into college and
beyond!
Sometimes, it feels like looking for a needle in a hay stack.
However, there will be many opportunities to hone this critical skill.
One such opportunity would be the AP multiple choice quizzes
and vocabulary quizzes. In first semester, you will have ample opportunities to
improve your performance on these types of tests. The AP MC quizzes are just
like reading comprehension tests; you get an excerpt and based on that excerpt,
you have to answer certain kinds of questions. Some of these questions ask you
about the rhetoric found in the text. So it is important to learn them in order
to answer the questions.
In addition, AP Lang students take several vocab quizzes,
which is a total misnomer as the material tested on these quizzes are not words,
but rather rhetorical devices. Further, there are two types of vocab quizzes:
definition and identification. Identification is definitely the harder of the
two because you need to spot the device used in a given quote. Go to www.virtualsalt.com/rehtoric.htm
for definitions or www.google.com
for examples.
Enough about exams, let’s move
on to the other good stuff. You will learn to write rhetoric alerts and rhetoric
lotteries. Rhetoric alerts are really interesting because they require that you
find the rhetorical device in any kind of communication ranging from a
commercial to a conversation. For example, the alert could be a funny commercial.
Rhetoric lotteries are
editorials that incorporate several assigned devices chosen randomly. For
example, I had to write as Tim Tebow, using ethos, deductive reasoning, taste,
slippery slope, straw man, allusion, etc. However, in order to successfully
write a rhetoric lottery, you’ll first have to know how to identify and write
the devices. Although we may not realize it, we use rhetoric every day; the challenge
here is to apply what you learn in class to a specific scenario. These are
useful skills you will use in the future whether as a lawyer, trying convince the jury and
judge that your argument is correct; as a businessman, writing contracts that have
double meanings, or as the President, trying to inspire the people you govern
into action.
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