Lesson video

I'm Mrs. Crompton.

Welcome to today's English lesson.

Our focus today is to consider how to use rhetorical features within our writing.

You will need a pen and paper as well as your planning, and also your draught introduction.

Take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away and have everything you need to hand.

So a quick reminder of the success criteria that we are working with, and today we are particularly going to be looking at structuring our writing and making very deliberate choices, as well as the importance of linguistic devices for effect.

You should have your overall plan to hand, and we will be working from the introduction into point one And you might have touched on that a little bit as you were working through perhaps your drop paragraph, and then making sure that we have gone to point two and point three on our essay plan.

So that by the end of the session, we've got the main body of our essay written.

First stopping point today then, is a reminder of the subject terminology list that we've been using for analysing unseen nonfiction texts, because this is a really good place for us to remind ourselves of the types of features we could be including in our writing.

And we should be doing that, shouldn't we? We should be looking at the examples from other writers and incorporating those within our own work as part of our process.

So a reminder here of the importance of things like, figurative language, repetition, use of pronouns, listing, anaphora, and emotive language.

So all of those things are techniques that we have seen other people use, and we can now bring to own works.

That's reminder number one.

To add to that, let's have a look at some more rhetorical devices.

Now, there are so many of these with lots of fancy names and knowing the names is great, but I think you're probably doing some of these things anyway, and I want you to actually, just be reminded of the method and then think about whether it might suit a particular point in the essay today, okay.

But obviously, I know you're going to want to write down the word and the definitions.

So take your time through this.

And we'll have a look at the following four features.

Analogy, is where we explain one thing in terms of another to highlight the ways they are alike, "She's as pale as a ghost." Now, within that example, it touches on a figurative technique there, too, doesn't it? Where it seems almost like a simile, but it is also known as an analogy within rhetoric.

Antithesis is where we make a connection between two things.

This is a really nice example that I bet, you know as a sentence, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," from Neil Armstrong's line.

And we've got the idea of the individual's momentary achievement, but actually the massive monumental impact it has on mankind, that's a fabulous sentence.

So that's the idea of antithesis, where you make a connection between two things.

I think that's an interesting technique for you to try and use within your own work.

Amplification, is the repetition of a word or expression for emphasis often using additional adjectives to clarify the meaning.

It sounds really complex, but actually look at the example, "learning, real learning, takes time," and we've just got that embedded clause, real learning with the repetition of learning and the addition of the objective, real, it create amplification.

Finally, an allusion, an allusion is where we make a reference to an event, a place or a person is well known to make a point, "I can't do that; I'm not Superman!" Superman is a superhero, he can do anything, I can't, that's the point you could make similar thing you know, if you were talking about features of what you imagined Paris to be like, has been really romantic, that sort of thing.

So you make a reference to something that's incredibly well known in order to make your points.

Okay, so those are a few more devices, few more things that you might want to draw upon as we start to really concentrate on the crafting of the main body of our viewpoint essay.

So what we're going to then be doing is, point one, two, three, I'm going to do the following.

Now we said, in terms of sequencing ideas, for a fact, I suggested in our previous session, that logos would come quite early on, and potentially in the second paragraph of our essay, because we need to have the key points presented early on to establish the credibility of our line of arguments.

So that was the thinking behind it.

Pathos, I suggested what in the middle of the essay and that's to create that sort of climactic moment.

And then finally that we bring in ethos right at the end to appeal to those "Big Picture" concepts, and to really question almost the reader's "trustworthiness" and their moral stance.

So that was the logic behind the sequencing that I suggested to you.

And you've been following in your plan.

Let's now add on to that.

What techniques suit your purpose and tone? So now we're thinking about "Kairos" with thinking about selecting the right technique at the right time, so that the appropriate tone is matched to what's happening.

So under logos, we might want to use personal pronouns, listing, amplification.

Under pathos, I've suggested emotive language, anaphora, figurative language.

And it's not exhaustive, you don't have to do all of those, but it's choosing from within those features.

And then the ethos part maybe antithesis at the end of the essay, a bit of direct address, the listing times three to really hammer home a point of view.

So we're going to try to write to this recipe, not because it's the only way of doing it, but because it's a nice way of starting to experiment with tone and purpose, and how it's all starting to share together as a response.

And for you to start finding out, what you're comfortable with, which devices you like, and which ones you never going to touch again.

That's absolutely fine too.

Okay, that's the way that the session is going to work.

So what you're going to do now, is to write your second paragraph and we're focusing on logos, establishing those logical, rational ideas that credibility of your argument depends on, clarity at this point.

And within this, I want you to think about using, some or all of the suggested features, personal pronouns, listing, amplification.

And you might need to play around with that.

You will be critiquing as you go, perhaps that's absolutely fine.

So timescale is for you to control.

And I'm now going to hand that over to you ,okay.

So second paragraph focus on logos.

Over to you.

Welcome back, so now we're on to that middle section.

So it could be a couple of paragraphs that you're working with here.

And I put pathos, slap bang in the middle on my plan.

I'm thinking about the idea of almost creating a crescendo, to your line of argument, you really grab everybody in terms of your key intent in the middle, and then you can't lose them from that.

And then sometimes that is balanced out with calm a tone in paragraph four, but that's for you to decide.

So it's been said that, "People who save lives or help improve the lives of others are the true role models of today." We're really going for pathos within that middle section.

You decide exactly where it's going to hit.

But what I have suggested is that we try and use the emotive language that seems quite obvious, maybe anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of sentences, and then also figurative techniques within that section too.

All, some, not a problem, choose from the list again.

Another thing to think about at this stage is, just matching up a little bit and seeing what you've just written and thinking about the flow from one section to the next.

Tone can change, but there needs to be a certain level of consistency, okay.

So it's over to you again, take your time, work your way through the ideas.

Okay then, now you have got introduction paragraphs one, two, three, and four completed.

I want us to take this next part of our learning to focus on reviewing and critiquing.

Remember our writing process.

We don't just check at the end.

We're actually going to stop and think about Kairos.

Think about the flow of the argument, make sure that we have thought a real clarity to what we're saying in terms of ideas and that we've got some sort of consistency running through.

Changes in tone yes, not a problem because he wants to have that sense of gears changing and sort of travelling through an argument, but you need to have no dramatic departures from one style to another, that really jar.

So we need to get that right.

If you remember the model answer, you know I said that bit where the expert opinion was brought in, just didn't seem to sit quite right.

That's what we're making sure that we're eliminating at this stage.

To help you, we've got the writing process for you to consider, we've got the criteria and then I've also popped the model response in there.

So you can see the bit that I was referring to about it not quite matching and sometimes feeling a little bit samey.

So you've now got the opportunity to really spend the final part of today's learning, reviewing, critiquing, amending, and really redrafting through the work that you've got so far.

And then, in our final session of the week, we'll look at how we're going to finish it off.

Okay, control list of review, and I will see you very shortly.

I hope you're proud of the piece of writing that you've put together so far.

All that remains for me to say is, thank you for your focus today.

Don't forget, bring everything with you to our final session and enjoy the rest of your learning today.