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English · Grade 8

Rhetoric, Perspective and Interpretation

Learners analyze how speakers and writers persuade and how perspective shapes a reader's experience. They determine a speaker's purpose and point of view and how the speaker answers opposing views, identify appeals to credibility, emotion and logic, analyze rhetorical devices in Abraham Lincoln's public-domain Gettysburg Address, and explain how dramatic irony creates humor or suspense.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 105 minutes
  • Rhetoric and perspective check: 9 questions
  • Ways to answer: choose an answer, highlight a text, match pairs, type a number, sort into groups and true or false
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What learners will discover

  • Determine a speaker's or author's purpose and point of view and analyze how they acknowledge and respond to conflicting viewpoints.
  • Identify appeals to credibility (ethos), emotion (pathos) and logic (logos) and analyze their effect on an audience.
  • Analyze rhetorical devices such as repetition, parallelism, antithesis and rhetorical questions, including in a historical speech.
  • Analyze how differences between what characters and readers know (dramatic irony) create suspense or humor.

Lessons

  1. Purpose, point of view and the other side 6 steps3 practiceabout 25 min
  2. Ethos, pathos, logos 5 steps3 practiceabout 25 min
  3. Devices in the Gettysburg Address 6 steps3 practiceabout 28 min
  4. Dramatic irony 6 steps3 practiceabout 27 min
  5. Rhetoric and perspective check 9 questions at the end

Keep exploring

Games to practice with

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Guide for grown-ups