It may be helpful in class before you assign Chapter Two to briefly discuss with your class their understanding of the term "rhetoric" and then define it more fully. This way the chapter will reinforce their understanding of the concept and help to fill in misunderstandings that students had in class.
You may want to turn the example of writing letters home into an exercise that students can use to explore issues of audience. Have your students write three letters home about their experiences at school so far this semester. Write one to their parents, one to their best friend and one to the teacher whose recommendation got them into college. Ask students to think about what different versions of the same events they would tell each different audience and how they would characterize them.
One way to talk about the importance of rhetoric is to examine the complexities of word choice. For this in-class exercise, you want to examine the different valances that loaded words contain by listing synonyms for those words and discussing their connotations. This discussion works well following exercise 2.1. Some possible words to choose include "homeless," "mob," and "rebel," though there are countless others. You can begin by putting one of these words on the board and asking your students to define it and possibly use it in a sentence. Then you can ask them to think of synonyms for the word and examine the different shades of meaning in turn. Besides just asking students what's different about the meaning of each word, you might ask them who would use it and how it might be used. What would be the effect of choosing one word over another in the same sentence?
Here's a list of possible synonyms for our three examples that you might want to have your students examine.
One way to combine instruction in Internet media and rhetoric is to cull a few posts from Internet discussions (newsgroup posts, e-mail discussion lists, or Web forums), reproduce them without revealing the original forum and have your class describe the three components of the rhetorical triangle in each post. Though you might need to contextualize some of the messages for your class, try to have them describe what they can about the speaker and the audience before you reveal the source of the messages. Then discuss as fully as possible the text and claims of the posts.
This exercise asks your students to explore the components of the rhetorical triangle through analysis of advertisements. You can have your students gather advertisements from the Web, magazines or newspapers and analyze the way the advertisements appeal to audience, how they create a speaker/voice, and what attempts at logical argument they present.
Exercise 2.1 Discussing The Implications of Language
Time: This exercise could take a whole class period if you cover the possibilities in detail. The group discussions should take about 30-45 minutes, but add another 15 if you want to discuss some of the results as a whole class.
Suggestions: Let students discover for themselves the differences these words convey and how people might use them. It's likely that some students will argue the words convey no special cultural assumptions, so it will be helpful to have other students explain how they view the implications of the terms. It's also a good idea after students have discussed the meanings of the terms to suggest that it's OK if they disagree, but you might examine (or ask them to examine) how their own perspectives influence the way they view the word.
Exercise 2.2 Appealing to an Audience
Time: This exercise can be accomplished in a class period, but you might want to wait until the next class meeting to discuss results. It will also work well as a homework assignment that you discuss in class.
Suggestions: Again, the focus here is to help students learn how to appeal to an audience. Stress the importance of working through the steps of identifying what values the audience holds and how to appeal to those values rather than just "skipping to the end" and writing down four reasons that might work. The process of discovering how to appeal to an audience is as important as anything else in the exercise, and students will undoubtedly obtain more convincing reasons if they've worked from an understanding of audience values.
In class discussion, it's a good idea to get students to share their own positions on how convincing the reasons of each group are. This can be especially fruitful if students develop a back and forth discussion of why they rejected or went ahead with different lines of argument. Remember, though, to make the students clearly point out where they disagree with their classmatesfor example, do they think the audience holds different values or do they think the reasons won't clearly appeal to the audience's values. If you want students to follow through on their assessments of audience, you can ask them to present their reasons to the other students in the class as if they were living the situation in the exercise. The class can be divided into retired miners, business leaders, superintendents and doctors and can concentrate on what values they believe their characters hold and how well the reasons presented work for them. A way to combine this exercise with Internet instruction is to "role-play" using MU*spaces, asking the class to act out their presentations on-line.
Exercise 2.3 Considering Audience, Speaker and Message
Time: This exercise works well for homework that you discuss the next class period, but can also be done quickly in class.
Suggestions: It's important to remember that student responses can be very wide-ranging. This diversity is fine so long as they've identified a credible speaker and an audience for each prompt.