1. For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation.
Rhetorical Devices To know what rhetorical devices are. To understand how rhetorical devices are used to create an effect. To be able to use rhetorical devices (schemes and tropes) in your writing and reflect how you will use them in your own short story.
Key Objective R12. This presentation will look at how writers communicate, and demonstrate ways in which students may be able to communicate more effectively.
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For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation.
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2. Brainstorm the types of purposes a writer may have.
Rhetorical devices
Writers write with a purpose.
Brainstorm the types of purposes a writer may have.

3. Here are some ideas: To explain something To persuade you To amuse you
To give you information
To entertain you
To shock you
To make you feel strongly about something
Space is provided for examples of each type of writing to be written on the board. If students have thought of other purposes these can be added to the list.
Look at your own answers and the list above.
Can you think of an example of each type of writing?

4. Sequencers
If a writer is describing how to do something, they may use sequencers to show the steps the reader needs to take:
First lift up the receiver. Next dial the code for the country you are ringing. Then dial the area code. After that dial the telephone number of the person you are ringing. Finally their phone should ring.
Writers can use italics and bold to highlight important words and phrases.
This presentation will show you some rhetorical devices people use to make their writing more effective.

5. Do you know what rhetorical devices are?
device is just another way of saying ‘technique’.
rhetorical means to do with persuasion and effective speaking and writing.
Repetition
Lists
Alliteration
Metaphor and simile
Rhetorical questions
Personal involvement
Audience involvement
Quotes
Facts and statistics
Rhetorical devices include:
Students can be asked if they know what rhetorical devices are before the explanatory boxes appear. Each device appears on a separate mouse click, so that after a few have been listed students can be asked if they can think of any others.

6. Education. Education. Education.
Repetition
Repeating important words or phrases can indicate to the reader that they are important. They help to make the writing more persuasive.
Tony Blair said that his main priority as Prime Minister would be:
Education. Education. Education.
© HMSO

7. School uniform is uncomfortable, expensive and old-fashioned.
Lists
A list of three fixes itself in a reader’s/listener’s mind.
School uniform is uncomfortable, expensive and old-fashioned.

8. Alliteration
Alliteration is where two or more words begin with the same letter.
You should take up juggling because it is fantastic fun.
Can you fill in these sentences with alliterative words?
The ____ weather made me feel _____ _______!
____________ is a ______ _______ _________
I can’t believe how _______ ______ ______ was!

9. simile metaphor Metaphor and simile
A simile is where one thing is said to be the same as or like something else
A metaphor is where one thing is said to be something else
Decide if the quotes below contain metaphors or similes
I wandered lonely as a cloud
(Wordsworth)
Juliet is the sun (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)
simile
metaphor

10. Rhetorical questions
These are questions where you don’t expect the audience or the reader to answer. They are a way of putting a question in their mind so that you can answer it.
Teachers do this all the time!

11. Personal involvement
This is useful when you are trying to persuade people to your point of view or when you want people to, say, buy something from you.
I was a heavy smoker and thought I’d never be able to give up. Then I discovered ‘Smokenomore’ patches.
I, too, know what it is like to sit in a hot classroom wearing a thick school blazer.

12. Audience Involvement
Your writing can be more effective if you draw the audience into the topic.
I know that many of you have endured the misery of over-cooked school dinners…

13. Quotes Using the words of famous people can enhance your meaning.
As John F. Kennedy once said,
‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’

14. Facts and statistics
These help to show that what you are saying is backed up by more than just your opinion.
A University of Neasden study showed that 85% of homework was a waste of time.

15. Facts and statistics You can combine these devices.
A University of Neasden study proved that 85%, I repeat, 85% of homework was dull, dreary drudgery.

16. Identify the rhetorical device

17. Activity
Choose a controversial topic such as school uniform, homework or animal experiments.
Write a few sentences that could be found in a campaign speech, or a letter to the press.
Try and use some of the rhetorical devices you have learned.
Students could swap their work and identify the rhetorical devices they have each used.

18. including the audience
In this famous speech how has Martin Luther King made his meaning so effective?
repetition
rhetorical question
including the audience
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of our cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating ‘For whites only’. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
fact
Click the mouse to see arrows labelling some of the devices used.
As an extension activity pupils could analyse a piece of writing which has used rhetorical devices to enhance its effect. They could be asked to find the rest of the Martin Luther King Jr. speech or look at Shylock’s speech at the court in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Alternatively, they could look at how politicians use rhetorical devices.
The whole of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream speech’ can be found at
simile

19. Which version is more powerful?
How effective would Martin Luther King’s speech have been if he hadn’t used rhetorical devices?
Here is an edited version of the speech with some of the rhetorical devices removed.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights when they will be satisfied. They say they can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of police brutality, as long as their bodies, tired after travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities, as long as their children are faced with signs stating ‘For whites only’. The Negro in Mississippi still cannot vote and a Negro in New York still believes he has nothing to vote for. They will not be satisfied until they get justice.
Pupils could write their own version of the speech without using rhetorical devices. They could then discuss the effect this has.
Which version is more powerful?

20. Read Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 1.
What rhetorical devices does Shakespeare use?
What effect do they have?
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee-
I have thee not and yet I see thee still!
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw…
This activity will work best if it is possible to provide students with the entire soliloquy. It is reproduced here:
MACBETH
Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. Exit Servant
Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
A bell rings
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

21. Can you name the rhetorical devices Churchill uses in the speeches below?
…We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air…
repetition
lists
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be…
rhetorical
question
metaphor