How to Teach Rhetorical Analysis

"I have used Flint most recently to encourage students to 'chase their curiosity.' I taught them my PASS acronym: Give the AI a Persona. Specify the Audience. Be Specific in crafting their prompts. Request reliable, researched Sources."

Kate Lambert, Upper School English Teacher at The Kinkaid School

Why this matters

A student can define ethos, pathos and logos on a quiz and still believe an ad's statistic because a narrator said it with confidence. Labeling a number as logos doesn't tell the student whether the number is true. The worksheet comes back with every appeal labeled, and the teacher has to wait for the essay to find out who never checked the facts.

What rhetorical analysis practice asks students to do

Rhetorical analysis asks students to explain how an author tries to persuade an audience: the claim, the evidence behind it, the appeals to credibility (ethos), emotion (pathos) and logic (logos), and the purpose those choices serve. The rhetorical analysis essay on the AP English Language exam asks students to analyze how a writer's choices contribute to the purpose of the text. In this activity, Sparky makes a short narrated ad about the student's own interest. The student names the appeal at three moments in the ad, checks whether the ad's statistic is true, and decides what is left of the argument if the statistic is false. A worksheet marks a wrong label wrong, and Sparky answers a wrong label with a hint about the line the student misread.

Diego's chat: an ad for a soccer player's focus drink

Diego plays center midfield on the JV soccer team. Diego knows the names of the three appeals and trusts a claim that sounds scientific.

The whole class gets the same activity: the same greeting, the same three steps and the same 1964 ad at the end. Each student's chat is their own. Sparky asks what they're into, makes a commercial about it, and its next message depends on what they just wrote.

Sparky uses the student's interestSparky gives a hint instead of the answerSparky checks the ad's facts with real sources

Diego

Interest: Plays center midfield on the JV soccer teamStarting point: Knows the three appeals by name, trusts claims that sound scientific

Sparky

Hi! Today I'll make a commercial just for you, you'll take it apart, and then we'll check whether its facts hold up. First, tell me one thing you're really into: a sport, a game, a hobby or a kind of music.

Diego

soccer. i play center mid on jv

Sparky

Love it, center mid is all about vision and stamina! I'll make you a commercial for a focus product tied to soccer. Watch it, then tell me: which appeal (ethos, pathos or logos) is used at each of the three moments in the ad?

Diego

the missed shot part is pathos cause it makes you feel bad for him. the dr marcus reid guy is logos cause hes giving facts about how it helped him. the 10% brain thing is logos cause its a statistic

Sparky

Take another look at Dr. Marcus Reid. He's a sports neuroscientist who says "I trust BrainBoost. I use it before every match." Is he giving you a fact or a number, or is he asking you to trust the product because of who he is?

Diego

oh ok the doctor guy is ethos. its making me trust him, not giving a fact

Understanding check

Now, the ad's logos moment: that "10% of your brain" statistic. Do you think that's actually true? How could you find out?

Diego

yeah its true. the scientist said it and everyone knows we only use 10% of our brain

Sparky

Let's actually check that! I'll look it up right now. Turns out it's actually a myth. Here's what reliable sources say:

Scientific American: Brain scans show activity throughout the entire brain, and even small areas of damage can affect how you function.
University of Washington, Neuroscience for Kids: There is no scientific evidence for the 10% claim.
BrainFacts, Society for Neuroscience: We use all parts of the brain. Different regions just activate at different times.

So, does the ad's logos hold up? And what happens to the ad's whole argument if that statistic is false?

Diego

wait so its a myth. brain scans show we use basically all of it. so the logos is fake, and without it the ad is just the sad missed shot and a guy i dont even know

Sparky

You said you believed the stat partly because "the scientist said it." Which moment in the ad made Dr. Reid sound trustworthy?

Diego

the ethos part. he had dr and neuroscientist next to his name so i just trusted him

Sparky

That's ethos doing its job, even for a made-up person with a fake title. Now let's look at a real ad: the 1964 "Daisy" ad, made for President Lyndon B. Johnson. A little girl counts daisy petals, a voice counts down from 10, then a nuclear explosion, and Johnson's voice says "These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark." Which appeal carries this ad, and is there any logos to fact-check?

Diego

its pathos. the little girl and then the bomb is scary. lbjs voice is kind of ethos cause hes the president. theres no number or fact to check at all, it just makes you scared

Sparky

Pathos carries it: the girl, the countdown, the explosion. Ethos comes from Johnson's own voice as president, and there's no logos at all. Now you can do this with any ad you see: spot the appeals, check any facts, and ask what's left if the facts don't hold up.

Moved the expert from logos to ethos after one hint, then found out the ad's statistic is a myth

Diego called Dr. Reid's endorsement logos because it sounded like a fact. Sparky didn't relabel it. It quoted Dr. Reid's line and asked whether he gave a fact or asked Diego to trust him. Diego then said the 10% statistic was true because "the scientist said it", so Sparky searched the web and showed three sources before asking whether the ad's logos held up. Once Diego saw the statistic was false, Sparky sent him back to the ethos moment he had labeled, which was why he believed it.

Diego is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened. The video picture is a frame from a commercial Sparky made. BrainBoost and Dr. Marcus Reid are made up for the commercial. The 1964 ad is real: the Library of Congress holds it as "Peace, little girl", Johnson's campaign spot known as the Daisy ad.

What Flint did for Diego

Sparky made a 44-second narrated commercial about soccer, Diego's own sport, with a missed shot, an expert and a statistic for Diego to take apart.
When Diego called the expert logos, Sparky quoted the expert's line and asked a question instead of giving the answer.
Sparky asked whether the statistic was true before saying anything about it.
When Diego believed the statistic, Sparky searched the web and cited three sources, each one a link Diego could open.
After the fact-check, Sparky asked Diego which moment had made him believe the statistic.

A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

Who believed the statistic, and who checked it

When students finish, Sparky grades each chat against the activity's rubric: identifying ethos, pathos and logos, checking whether the evidence is true, and applying the analysis to a real ad. The activity page shows who needs help right now, what the class does well, and what to practice next.

Flint's activity page for an activity called Take Apart an Ad, Then Fact-Check It. Needs attention shows a live alert that one student has called the sports scientist logos twice and wrote that it's a fact because a scientist said it. Activity analytics lists what the class does well, an area of improvement where 12 students first labeled the expert's endorsement as logos, and a follow-up with a button to create a follow-up activity. The Sessions table shows two submitted students graded Excellent and Proficient and one still in progress. — Example activity page
After an English class finishes the ad fact-check activity
The school and students are made up for this page. In this example, most of the class found sources showing their ad's statistic is a myth, and the area to practice is telling an expert's endorsement apart from evidence.

Set up the activity for free

The ad fact-check activity is in Flint's public library, with Sparky's guidelines, greeting and a rubric already written. Open it, select Try this activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and move it to a class. In the activity settings, select Try session myself to test the activity as a student before you assign it.

For more English activities, see Flint for English language arts.

Start the activity for free