Lesson video

Hello, I'm Miss Howard.

And for today's lesson we're going to be looking at the art of rhetoric.

Now rhetoric is a really clever way of crafting your language or the structure of your writing or speaking to convince other people to agree with your ideas.

It's a little bit like the magic tool of English language.

We're going to look at three key aspects of rhetoric, where rhetoric came from, and then we're going to focus on one of those three aspects to think about how we can use that to persuade other people to agree with what we think.

So close down any distractions or conversations or apps that you might have running in the background.

You'll need a pen and something to write on.

Find yourself a quiet space where you know that you won't be disturbed for the lesson, and then we'll get started.

So in today's lesson, we're going to explore these key questions: what is rhetoric? Who was Aristotle? And all will be revealed later.

What is the Aristotelian Triad? And why is rhetoric useful? Rhetoric, which is a noun, means the art of persuasive speaking or writing.

It comes from the Greek word rhetor, which means speaker or master orator.

An orator is a professional speaker, somebody that's used to formally speaking in front of an audience.

Ancient Greece is the birthplace of rhetoric.

A man's success and influence in Ancient Greece depended upon his ability to persuade other men to vote him into power.

As a result of this, small schools formed to teach how to speak persuasively.

The men that formed these schools were known as Sophists.

Quickly pause the video here and answer the question: "What is rhetoric?" You have four options here, best of luck.

Brilliant! Option two is the correct answer.

A literary tool used to persuade.

Don't worry too much if you didn't get it right first time.

We're going to come back to this idea of rhetoric as we go through the lesson.

So the Sophists believed that they could use language to convince anyone to believe their views, even if they possessed very little knowledge of the topic.

They didn't think that you needed to know a lot about a topic in order to be able to convince other people their opinion.

Aristotle, a famous philosopher in Ancient Greece, criticised the Sophists.

He believed that to use rhetoric respectfully, you should use the truth rather than manipulating your audience's feelings.

Aristotle founded the Lyceum, which was essentially the School of Athens, in 334 B.

C.

It was known as a place to study philosophical debate.

Philosophical debate is such things as life and science and nature and all of the social ideas at the time that people might have disagreed on.

Aristotle used this school as a base to teach people the art of speaking persuasively.

So, just pause your video here, and have a go at this question.

"Why was Aristotle critical of the Sophists?" You have four options, best of luck.

If you got option four, fantastic! Aristotle was critical of the Sophists because he believed that they manipulated others.

Don't worry too much if you didn't get it right this time.

Aristotle came up with these three key aspects of rhetoric that would help people to understand how to structure an argument and how to use language in a particular way that would be persuasive.

He said, "Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds.

The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience in a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself." So, these three key values formed the Aristotelian Triad.

To speak persuasively, we need to make sure that we're thinking about these three key aspects of the Triad when we're looking at rhetoric.

Ethos is how trustworthy and credible you appear to be to your audience.

You must feel, to the audience, that you are somebody who genuinely cares about whatever it is that you're talking about.

Logos is the content of your speech or your writing to make your argument logical and well-evidenced.

Logos is your proof to back yourself up.

And last but not least, pathos.

Pathos is to what extent you have evoked an emotional response from your audience.

How have you left your audience feeling as a result of your speech or your writing? Today we're going to look at ethos in a little bit more detail.

Ethos, which is a noun, means the culture or atmosphere created by the speaker or writer.

Ethos is all about the way you present yourself to an audience when you're speaking.

Your audience needs to believe that you are trustworthy, knowledgeable about the topic you are giving an opinion of, someone who really, genuinely cares about their audience, and a morally good person.

Pause the video, and have a go at this question: "What is ethos?" Fantastic if you got option number two.

Ethos is the way you present yourself to the audience.

Ethos is all about being trustworthy, so trusted, that you care about the audience and about their ideas and their points of view, and credible.

Credible is that you come from a place, or you have a grounded understanding that we can think that you have some knowledge here so that we can have faith in what you're saying.

For example, if you were building houses and you were trying to sell someone one of your houses, we would find you more credible if you were a bricklayer, or qualified in the art of building houses.

That would make you more credible to us as a builder.

Pause the video here and have a go at this.

Fill in the gaps for me.

Presenting yourself as.

Brilliant work! Effective ethos is presenting yourself as trustworthy and credible.

You can create a strong sense of ethos within your writing or your speaking by using these three key devices.

Collective nouns, so we, our, or us.

Rhetorical questions, and see the example here, "Will you do the right thing?" And also including language that makes the audience understand that this is of value to you.

"I believe this is important," and then giving your reasons why.

Now here are three examples of a speaker trying to persuade the audience of something in particular.

What I want you to do is read through.

I'm going to read these three with you, and then I'd like you to pause the video and think about which speaker you think is the best example of a speaker creating a strong ethos.

Let's read through these together.

Speaker one, "Our expertise in building houses is evidenced by satisfied customers who expect nothing but the best.

We're cheap and cheerful." Speaker two, "Our tireless commitment, three decades of experience and willingness to go the extra mile for the people of our community make us the ideal team for the job." Speaker three, "If you came here to listen to nonsense, you came to the right place.

I might not know it all, but I'm good, moral, honest and deserving." Pause the video here and just make some notes around which speaker you think is the best example of creating a strong ethos with a few reasons as to why that might be.

Let's have a look at your answer.

Don't worry too much if the wording of your answer is slightly different to my examples.

As long as you've made a decision and then you've thought about the reasons behind those decisions.

All three of those speakers, to some degree, had en element of creating ethos.

But we want to think about which one is the best example.

Now speaker number two was, arguably, the best example.

They used collective nouns, they also showed that they could be trusted because of their proven track record, and they also showed that they cared by saying that they would go the extra mile.

So let's have a look at our two examples.

"Speaker two is the best example of creating a strong sense of ethos because they sound trustworthy." It's a solid answer, and it gives me a reason by using "because".

Then let's take a look at the good answer.

"I think speaker two is the best example of creating a strong sense of ethos because they use examples of how they have been trustworthy in the past to demonstrate how credible they are." The reason that the good example is slightly better is because they've included both trustworthy and credible to demonstrate their understanding of what makes a strong sense of ethos.

Pause the video here, and we're going to have a go at this mini-task, all right? You're going to have a go at building a strong sense of ethos for yourself.

You've been asked to speak to students to give up one break time a week to clear up litter.

How could you build a strong sense of ethos in the opening lines of your speech? Now you could start your speech with, "Good morning.

I'm here today to talk to you about.

." So use that line if you're struggling to get started.

Have a think about, and if you need to rewind to go back to have a look at the three key devices that we could use to create a strong sense of ethos, then by all means use those to help you out.

Pause the video here, and have a go.

Best of luck.

Brilliant work! Well done for giving that a go for the first time, and putting your knowledge of rhetoric into action.

Let's have a look at some examples.

So you could have, for your first answer, an acceptable answer, "Hello! I think it's important to pick up litter and I'm here to explain why." Okay? This answer outlines that this person feels that this is really important, so they have attempted to create a strong sense of ethos in that way.

Let's have a look at the good answer.

"Good morning.

Now is a key time for us to consider the impact our litter has upon the environment, and what we can do to combat it.

Isn't it time we took action?" Now this person's answer is good because they've used collective nouns: us, our, we.

They've also decided to include a rhetorical question in there: "Isn't it time we took action?" And they've demonstrated how they feel about litter: ".

consider the impact our litter has upon the environment." If you want to, make a few notes around your existing answer and add a couple of lines.

So our final question for this lesson today, "Why is rhetoric useful?" Why do we need to know about it? When would we use it? Pause the video, and make a few notes around your answer to that question.

"Why is rhetoric useful?" Think about who would use rhetoric.

As an individual, why would rhetoric language be useful to you or somebody else? Why might rhetoric language be useful for a teacher? Or a politician? Or, how would a big company perhaps use rhetorical language? I've given you some sentence starters there to start you off with your thinking.

Don't forget to resume and press play once you're finished up.

Good luck.

And that brings us to the end of today's lesson.

I really hope you've enjoyed finding out about the art of rhetoric.

It really is the secret weapon of the English language.

I hope you've had a fantastic time.

I'd like you to do two things for me.

I'd like you to write down three things that you've learned during the lesson today.

I'd also like you to hop on and have a go at the quiz.

Now if you'd like to share your work with Oak National, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Take care.