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Rhetorical Modes. Patterns of Argument (egregiously appropriated from The Princeton Review’s Cracking the AP English Language and Composition Exam). Three reasons for learning and practicing rhetorical modes:. Learning rhetorical modes will give you time-tested approaches for writing essays.
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Rhetorical Modes Patterns of Argument (egregiously appropriated from The Princeton Review’s Cracking the AP English Language and Composition Exam)
Three reasons for learning and practicing rhetorical modes: • Learning rhetorical modes will give you time-tested approaches for writing essays. • The multiple choice questions on the AP exam often include rhetorical mode terminology. • Understanding of these modes will assist in analyzing the writing of others.
1. Example or Illustration • Examples used to substantiate an idea must be relevant and convincing!
Practice Drill: Read each of the topics below, and make a list of three examples you could use to support them. Ensure that all examples are relevant and support the appropriate side of the argument. • Topic 1: High schools unwittingly encourage students to cheat. • Topic 2: Studying the humanities is important. • Topic 3: Respecting diversity reveals much about a person.
2. Classification • Grouping things according to certain characteristics • Very useful for analysis and explanation
Practice Drill: Read each of the topics below, and think about how you would organize your essay in terms of classification. Come up with a possible thesis (central idea) and plan how you could categorize the information you have on these topics into three or four meaningful divisions. • Topic 1: television commercials • Topic 2: students • Topic 3: cars
3. Comparison and Contrast • This mode can be used • to explain, i.e. when comparing something unfamiliar with something less well known. • to argue in favor of one of the two elements. • Selecting points of comparison and contrast requires first classifying them!
Practice Drill: Make a T-chart for each of the topics below, listing the similarities on one side and the differences on the other. Then organize these similarities and differences in a logical manner; sort them out so that you have three central ideas (which would then become three separate compare and contrast paragraphs in an essay. • Topic 1: two universities • Topic 2: two types of cuisine • Topic 3: the experience of traveling to the mountains and the experience of traveling to the ocean