The rhetorical appeals, ethos, pathos, and logos, are usually the first concept I introduce in my unit on rhetorical analysis. I use the Greek terms in class since they’re shorter to say, though I tell students that in their essays they’re usually better off just naming what a writer is doing and how it affects the audience rather than reaching for the Greek vocabulary.
Before naming any of the concepts, I open with a think-pair-share: imagine you’ve been invited somewhere by your best friends on Friday night, but you’ll need to convince a parent or guardian to let you stay out two hours past curfew. What are three different approaches you might take? Students write, pair up, and share, and then I start a list on the board and sort their approaches into categories: some lean on their own credibility (“I’m a good student,” “I don’t have homework”), some appeal to a parent’s emotions (“I’ll feel left out”), and some use logic (“So-and-so’s mom will be there”). That sorting becomes the on-ramp into naming ethos, pathos, and logos.
For notes, I use a flashcard method: students take notes on the back of each flashcard and decorate or color the front in a way that helps them tell the three appeals apart. If color-coding isn’t a priority for you, pre-colored versions work just as well. I also build in quick checks throughout the notes, like asking students to name the emotional appeal at work in a familiar slogan.
If there’s time left in the period, I have students go back to their curfew think-pair-share and label which appeal they used, then evaluate whether that would actually have been the most effective choice with their own parent. For classes with more time, like a block schedule, a good extension is having students revisit one of the unit one speeches (Malala or Thurgood Marshall) and write a short paragraph on which appeal the speaker relies on most, with a couple of pieces of evidence.
The next several days are spent practicing the appeals through stations, so it’s worth making sure every student has a complete set of flashcards before moving on.