Tuesday, September 22

Today in class, we worked on "cementing" the ideas of pathos, ethos, and logos. We discussed logos and ethos in further detail and sharpened our understanding by analyzing some more video clips:

Pepsi Challenge

Prius Commercial

Honda Commercial

All The King's Men

We consistently returned to the idea that most effective speakers and writers use a MIXTURE of these three rhetoric types -- and that using them is often dependent on the situation and the audience.

Next, you considered a hypothetical situation -- that you had been caught using a cell phone at school and would be losing it for a month. We asked you to write a paragraph in which you tried to convince the teacher not to confiscate the phone, and we asked you to use pathos, ethos, or logos (or all three) in your writing. You then shared your examples, which were pathos-heavy and definitely entertaining.

Then, we looked at a selection from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. You read it and underlined/highlighted any words or phrases that you thought were good examples of pathos; then, we discussed how you could sense the presence of pathos in them. The handout (which we'll be using later!) is here:

MLK Handout

Finally, you watched a short clip from a TV series, and we asked you to consider whether it featured more pathos, more ethos, or more logos...we also left you hanging until next class, as it didn't resolve in a satisfying way.

Homework tonight is to finish Chapters 1 & 2 of Animal Farm -- due tomorrow!