Suggested Activities for Chapter 18

1. Break the class into small groups. Assign each group a public figure who needs to repair their credibility. You may want to consider Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, James Frey, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Chris Brown, Jesse James, or Lindsay Lohan. Each group will develop and present to the class a plan for how their figure can rehabilitate their credibility.
2. Give students articles from newspapers, Web sites, or magazines that contain arguments. Instruct the class to look for very good, well-supported arguments and for fallacious, poorly supported arguments. Choose some students to come forward and share an argument and their analysis of it.
3. Break the class into nine small groups. Assign each group a fallacy: hasty generalization, post hoc fallacy, reversed causality, ad populum (bandwagon) fallacy, ad hominem (personal attack) fallacy, straw person fallacy, slippery slope fallacy, false dilemma, and appeal to tradition. Give the groups five minutes to come up with as many examples of their fallacy as possible. Instruct them to try to remember as many real-life examples as they can (but they can invent some as needed). Have each group share their favorite three with the class. Have the class vote on the most and least ethical.
4. Break the class into three small groups and instruct them to read Anna Martinez’s speech. Assign to each group the subject of ethos, logos, or pathos. Each group must identify and evaluate places where the speaker is addressing the group’s assigned rhetorical area. Reconvene the class and have the groups share their findings.
5. As a class, outline two persuasive speeches on the same controversial topic of your choice. One speech should be focused on persuading through logos, and one should be focused on persuading through pathos. When complete, discuss the pros and cons of each approach. Then craft a third speech using the best strategies from each original speech.