Rhetoric has been around since Plato and Aristotle, and many of the techniques we use to persuade people haven't changed much since then. This course aims to explore some of the history of persuasive writing and speaking to help students make use of those techniques themselves, and also how to spot them in places like news articles and political speeches. 

The course breakdown is as follows: 
Week 1: Introduction to rhetoric and logical fallacies 
Week 2: The Three Artistic Proofs (as defined by Aristotle) plus one
Week 3: Loaded Language, poetic and figurative devices
Week 4: Op-eds and the use of commas
Week 5: Knowing your audience (with some help from Shakespeare) 
Week 6: Use of facts and reason, and confirmation bias
Week 7: Group work review day, spotting techniques in speeches, more grammar if time allows
Week 8: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, rewards and threats, shock tactics


During Class Time: 
Throughout the course students will watch videos of political speeches and read speeches and essays (such as MLK Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail), as well as examine some of the major speeches from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to see how different fallacies and rhetorical devices are used. 
Students will sometimes be working together to find as many of these devices and fallacies in a given document as they can, and then share with the class. 
We will also be looking at an often overlooked aspect of persuasiveness: presentation in the form of correct grammar. We will go over eight essential rules for when to use a comma, as well as the nuts and bolts of sentence construction in the form of conjunctions and clauses. 

Homework:
Students will be asked to write 3 short (100-300 word) pieces over the duration of the course, making use of the techniques we covered most recently in class. These pieces will take the form of letters and speeches, as directed, and will be evaluated on how well and how often specific techniques were implemented.