This lesson focuses on prewriting including the purpose and characteristics of prewriting, prewriting strategies, the rhetorical context, and developing a working thesis statement. It also includes a slide show about author, audience,...

This instructional activity focuses on audience analysis and recognizing rhetorical approaches to building common ground. A practice activity is provided.

This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of allegory by using George Orwell's widely read novella, Animal Farm. Through this novel, students will learn what an allegory is, the rhetorical components of an allegory, and...

Explains what personification is and gives examples. Includes links to related articles on symbolism, elements of rhetoric, fables, figure of speech, and allegory.

A discussion of the themes in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, including fate vs. free will, public self vs. private self, misinterpretations and misreadings, inflexibility vs. compromise, and rhetoric and power. Also has link to a quiz on...

This guide is written for college students, but should be very useful for upper level high school students as well. The writer first describes fourteen steps to take in doing a close reading, then provides six pieces of advice on how to...

Young scholars explore the impact language has on politics and social beliefs. They explore the evolution of language (drawing on the knowledge gained through previous research), consider how language evolves, and explore who controls...

President George W. Bush discusses his energy policy, American's dependence on oil and alternative fuel in this April, 2006, speech.

This lesson plan serves as an introduction to American literary non-fiction writing and focuses primarily on teaching some basic approaches to recognizing rhetorical strategies adopted for persuasive effect in essays and non-fiction. The...

This lesson plan focuses on rhetorical devices and how to use them effectively in public speaking. These include alliteration, antithesis, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, personification, repetition and parallelism, and simile and metaphor.

This article focuses on what grammar 10th graders need to know to be successful in the upper grades and college. These include the following: parts of speech, sentence structure/syntax, types of sentences, types of clauses, parallelism,...

This document from the Dover Adult Learning Center is a nice resource for any beginners in the political decision-making process. Provides links to material to help decipher ads, candidate speeches, rhetorical tricks, campaign issues,...

This section from The Roman Empire explains the education system and how boys and girls were schooled. It discusses the school year, the curriculum, and rhetoric.

Prose and verse, wordplay, neologisms, and rhetoric: discover how Shakespeare and Renaissance writers developed innovative and experimental uses of language.

Young scholars continue to learn that people use the written word to express their thoughts and ideas about social issues and attempt to persuade others to do the same. They will explore advanced rhetorical devices, including satire and...

This is an encyclopedia entry for the word "Understatement." It defines the term, provides background information about it, and offers references.

In this 3-lesson unit, students will read Douglass's narrative. They will analyze Douglass's vivid first-hand accounts of the lives of slaves and the behavior of slave owners to see how he successfully contrasts reality with romanticism...

See how Ronald Reagan's rhetoric evolved from his speech calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" to his signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by examining photographs and documents.

A thorough and complete biography. Includes sections on Kierkegaard's life, rhetoric, ethics, politics, and religion, just to name a few. Also contains a time-line and bibliography of works.

You will learn how to write an expository/procedural text with a variety of sentence structures, rhetorical devices, transitions, appropriate facts, and details.

[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] You will learn various rhetorical strategies you can use in writing for a particular audience and purpose.

This multi-session lesson features the opportunity to analyze a variety of famous speeches. Students will look carefully at tone, rhetoric, propaganda techniques, and historical context as they write an analysis paper....

This site contains definitions and analysis of American captivity narratives. Describes the conventions, rhetorical purposes, and themes of the captivity narrative genre. Lists example captivity narratives.

The denial of the Holocaust, anti-Semitic rhetoric and the growth of hate groups has led many European nations to pass laws criminalizing hate speech to stop the resurrection of Nazism in Europe. This article discusses individual...