Teach rhetorical appeals and devices without stopping at simple identification.

The Art of Persuasion is a ready-to-use secondary ELA mini-unit that helps students understand how speakers and writers influence an audience—and why their rhetorical choices matter.

Students begin with an accessible Feel / Think / Do framework for identifying purpose, then learn the three major rhetorical appeals—ethos, logos, and pathos—along with five commonly used rhetorical devices: anaphora, antithesis, parallelism, rhetorical question, and paralipsis/apophasis.

From there, students move beyond simply naming techniques and begin analyzing them using a straightforward What? How? Why? approach:

• What rhetorical choice is being used?
• How does it affect the audience?
• Why might the speaker use it to accomplish a particular purpose?

The result is a practical introduction to rhetorical analysis that can stand alone or prepare students for more complex work with speeches, arguments, literature, and nonfiction.

What's Included

• 21-slide instructional presentation
• 5-page guided notes
• Guided notes answer key
• 3-page rhetoric practice activity
• Rhetoric practice answer key
• Optional 3-page Julius Caesar Act III rhetoric application
• Julius Caesar application answer key
• Teacher Guide + Quick Start
• Printable PDF versions
• Editable student DOCX files
• Editable PowerPoint presentation

The guided notes closely follow the presentation, while the general practice activity gives students opportunities to identify appeals and devices, analyze their effects, and create persuasive language of their own.

Optional Julius Caesar Extension

Teaching Julius Caesar? An additional application activity asks students to analyze and compare Brutus and Antony's Act III funeral speeches, considering each speaker's purpose, appeals, rhetorical devices, audience response, and overall effectiveness.

Not teaching Shakespeare? Simply leave this portion out. The complete rhetoric lesson works without it.

Perfect For

• Rhetorical analysis introductions
• Argument and persuasion units
• Speech analysis
• Secondary ELA
• Julius Caesar
• Review or reinforcement of ethos, logos, and pathos
• Preparing students for more sophisticated rhetorical analysis
• Independent, partner, or whole-class instruction

A Flexible Resource

Use the complete sequence as a short mini-unit, teach only the sections your students need, or use the practice activity as a review or diagnostic. The included teacher guide provides suggested pacing, stopping points, and options for students with different levels of prior knowledge.