End of Semester Reflection on Political Rhetoric

Start by breaking students into small groups and asking them to reflect upon why the university feels it's important to require that they take the course. Give them 10 minutes or so and move from group to group while providing a little coaching or feedback. Once everyone comes back together, ask them what they came up with. You might consider having something prepared to say about how basic composition courses have been a feature of American public universities since their inception. Once they've said all the obvious things, ask them to highlight how these things are particularly relevant to the 21st-century American experience.

Play for them a recent political TV advertisement. When I used this lesson plan, I played Mitt Romney's latest shtick, the motto of which is "Obama Isn't Working." The advertisement is much like a trailer for new cheap action movie, and the sense of impending doom it gives for the upcoming Democratic National Convention is scary. Have the students discuss the rhetorical strategies at play in the advertisement. Ethos, pathos, and logos are all relevant, and as a group they should be able to nail down which stases are coming into play.

Next, have them watch a recent campaign speech of the same candidate. Ask them to think about how the candidate used the different medium (a public speech) to advance a now familiar argument. (What's helpful here is that as a group, the students now have some context for the argument being made and are able to discuss it on equal footing. Often what happens in composition classes is that students are all writing on very different topics, and it's hard for them to see how another's question is relevant to their own.) Faulty logos will probably be apparent no matter which candidate one chooses to examine, so be sure to press students on whether or not the arguments are successful.

Finally, provide students with the other side's rebuttal. As them to think about the way the left is challanging the right's rhetoric (or vice versa), and how this complicates the things being said. Also, ask them if there's any suspect rhetoric in the rebuttal. Ask them to reflect about how what they've learned in the course is informing how they're consuming this public content. Ask them to think about the ways in which rhetorical invention and rhetorical consumption are related.