ENG III: The Cultural Impact
Date: Monday, January 30, 2012 (Day 45)
Content: Subject/Verb Agreement, Analysis of Speeches, ACT Reading Principles
Essential Questions/Learning Targets:
WRITE THESE ON THE BOARD IN THE IDENTIFIED SPOT
· I can use subject and verb agreement correctly.
· I can learn and use test-taking strategies to improve my reading.
· I can identify the following in persuasive writing?
o Analogy
o Logos
o Ethos
o Pathos
· What elements make a persuasive text great?
Independent Work – establishing engagement (8-10 minutes):
WRITE SEE ACTIVBOARD UNDER BELLWORK ON THE BOARD
Copy Agreement Rule 16 from the Activboard. Agreement PPT Slide #29
(Turn on the Activboard using the white remote just under the computer monitor. The Agreement Power point is open at the bottom of the screen under powerpoints. Or you can go to the Rowan County Schools page. Click the link for Rowan County Sr. High School. Then click the link for Teacher Websites/Pages. Find my name and click. Click on the class ENG III: The Cultural Impact. The powerpoint is titled Agreement and can be found in the Class Powerpoints folder on this page.)
Guiding Purpose – fostering engagement (3-5 minutes):
Review the Essential Questions and Learning Targets.
Interactive Instruction and Authentic Engagement – deepening understanding (25-40 minutes):
· Allow five minutes for students to copy the Agreement rule from the activeboard. Take roll during this time. (You can hit the “freeze” button on the remote and it will freeze the screen with the powerpoint and allow you to still use the computer to do other things.)
· Discuss the Agreement rule and answer any questions students may have.
· Pass out handout “Speech Analysis Worksheet.” Allow students to read over the worksheet. Have student answer the following on their own paper.
· Define as concisely as possible the terms rhetoric, ethos, logos, and pathos. Take up. Use students’ responses to gauge the amount of detail you will need to illustrate the terms. These terms have already been covered, so this will tell us if they really get it or not.
· Tell students that they will have a couple of major assignments for this last unit. All of these assignment involve persuasive documents.
· Advise students that they will begin by analyzing a speech from the movie Clueless. To set up the scene explain that Cher Horowitz, a teenager at a Beverly Hills High School, is delivering one side of a debate on immigration. She is arguing for relaxed immigration limits.
· SET THE PURPOSE: As students watch the video clip, they should think about strengths and weaknesses of the speech.
· View the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSvE5ul1Vrw. They only need to watch the first minute and 2 second (the first speaker). Take advantage of this time to look over their turned-in definitions.
· After they have watched the clip, pass out the script of the speech. Allow student a moment to read and fill out the Speech Analysis Worksheet.
· Was the speech effective? Take a vote class vote using a modified Four Corners Method. Have all students who would give her a low grade go to one corner of the room. All who would give her an average score to another corner of the room. All who would give her a high score to a third corner of the room.
· Ask each group to give their reasons for their score.
· Have students return to their seats.
· Lead a discussion about students’ reactions to Cher’s speech. Tell them it is fine to revise or modify their Speech analysis worksheets as the discussion progresses; this is the first time they’ve used this form.
· During the discussion ask the students to hypothesize about
o The name of the speech
o The point in time the speech was given
o The writer and audience for the speech, an
o The purpose of the speech.
· Point out that the situation in which Cher gave her speech was very important. It was a classroom speech, and she know her audience of Bronson Alcott High School students well.
· Emphasize that situation, audience, and purpose all play very important roles in all kinds of speeches and, more generally, in all kinds of persuasive situations.
· Explain that, for Cher’s fictional classroom speech, there are actually three different audiences. Ask the class who they are? Guide the class to the following answers:
1. Cher’s classmates
2. Cher’s teacher
3. The audience watching the film
· Discuss the fact that most speeches given in a classroom are “artificial.” They are not truly persuasive as the speeches we will be studying are intended to be. We will be reading speeches delivered by real people in real situations for real purposes. However, whether they are fictional or real, all persuasive speeches use similar strategies to convince the audiences of their arguments.
· Ask students if Cher used any literary or rhetorical devices that they are aware of.
· Let students know that in the next few days we will be discussing different kinds of rhetorical devices speakers use.
· Continue discussion asking questions suggested by the Speech Analysis Worksheet:
o What method of organization does Cher use in her speech?
o Does Cher’s introduction capture your interest and let you know how her speech will be organized? Does her conclusion leave you with a strong sense of her point of view on the topic?
o Why was the speech written?
o What questions remain unanswered in this speech?
o What kinds of arguments does Cher use in this speech?
· In comparing Haitian immigrants to people who crashed a party she organized, Cher is arguing by analogy, which is a time-honored tradition in persuasive speechmaking.
· Add to Notebook. Vocabulary 1: analogy- A comparison between two things, typically on the basis of their structure and for the purpose of explanation or clarification. Have students restate the definition in their own words.
· Some philosophers say we think mainly by analogy.
· Ask students to give examples of analogies. Give your own examples, as necessary.
· Give students time to think about the aptness of Cher’s analogy: do they think she could have chosen a better analogy to make her particular point? What are the strengths and weaknesses of comparing immigrants to party-crashers?
· Help students realize that Cher’s argument minimizes the difficulty of including immigrants into the life of the United States by the very nature of the analogy she uses. Because of this, it is a faulty analogy.
· Her speech also shows the danger of relying too heavily on analogy to prove a point.
· Write This Down: Never use an analogy as part of your thesis statement. Analogies tend to fall apart when pushed.
· Continue the conversation by returning to questions on the worksheet:
o What kinds of evidence, if any, does Cher provide to support her statements?
o What kinds of appeals does she use?
· Remind students that the three main appeals – or persuasive techniques – logos, ethos, and pathos – were discussed previously. These concepts can be used when looking at any visual, written, or spoken texts. Ethos is ethical appeal and describes the tools a speaker uses to persuade the audience that he is a person worth listening to. Talk about other examples of ways speakers establish their credibility:
o When the president stands in front of the presidential seal and an American flag while giving an important speech, he is reminding viewers of his important position.
o If a speaker introduces herself by explaining that she has written two books on the topic she is speaking about, then she is reminding listeners of her expertise
o When John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted explains that his own child was kidnapped, he is letting audiences know that he had the same experience as those he is trying to help.
· Help students relate this concept to Cher’s speech.
o How does Cher establish her credibility to her audience?
o How might her delivery positively affect her particular audience’s sense of who she is?
· Students should recognize that her character and way of speaking appeal to her fellow students, and that is part of why her audience seems to agree with her.
· Logos describes the logical tools a speaker uses to persuade an audience. A logical appeal involves offering a central idea and developing it with a variety of examples and clear reasoning. Logos speaks to reason by providing facts, statistics, numbers, examples, expert testimony or logic.
o When, in a toothpaste commercial, it is revealed that 9 out of 10 dentists agree that using one particular brand is the best way to avoid cavities, a logical appeal is made through statistics and expert testimony.
o In an anti-smoking advertisement, the narrator uses a logical appeal when he quotes the World Health Organization: “Half of all smokers will eventually die as a result of their smoking. If current smoking trends persist, about 500 million people currently alive, nearly 9% of the world’s population, will die as a result of tobacco” (World Health Organization, 1996). The appeal not only uses statistics as support for the argument but also relies on the external authority of the World Health Organization.
o A logical appeal is also used in deductive or inductive arguments. A deductive argument begins with general information and leads toward the specific, as in the syllogism, “All people are mortal. Your teacher is a person. Therefore, your teacher is mortal.” An inductive argument argues from specific information toward generalizations. When Senator Edward Kennedy said, “In Georgia blacks who killed whites received the death penalty only 4.2 percent of the time” (Gross & Jennings, n.d.), thereby arguing the death penalty is unfair, he was using an inductive argument.
· Ask students for examples.
· As before, connect the concept of logos to Cher’s speech in Clueless by asking, “What is Cher’s argument, and how well, if at all, does she support it?”
· Pathos is the way a speaker uses words or examples to appeal to an audience’s emotions. This one pull at the audience’s heartstrings.
o When a student says to a teacher, “My favorite grandmother died on Friday, so I couldn’t get my homework done,” she is using an emotional appeal to others’ pity and sympathy.
o When, in a car advertisement, a beautiful woman stands beside the car and gazes off at a lovely sunset, the advertiser is speaking to the buyer’s emotions by suggesting that purchasing the car might help one get to know a beautiful woman or go to a beautiful place.
o In the days after September 11, 2001, there were many images on television and in newspapers that called up our emotions: flags flying at half-mast or waving in the rubble of what used to be the World Trade Center. These were appeals to patriotism.
· Ask students for examples of Pathos.
· Ask students if they can find any ways that Cher Horowitz attempts to arouse her audience’s emotions about immigration.
· Emphasize that these appeals are not necessarily separate in a speech. A single sentence can use ethos, pathos, and logo at the same time. One mark of a truly great speech, experts in rhetoric say, is a balanced and seamless blend of all three appeals throughout the text.
Closure and Consolidation – making meaning, clarify (5-10 minures):
Explain that this discussion was a simplified example of the ways in which they will be analyzing increasingly complicated speeches during this short unit. Remind them thaty they will use the Speech Analysis worksheet as they study all of the speeches. Ask if they think they have begun to address the essential question, “What elements make a persusive text great?”