Tone is attitude with no plan. Rhetoric is attitude with one. Everything from the last three rooms is still running — diction, figures, sentence length, omission — but now it is organized, aimed at a named audience, and trying to get somebody to do something specific. Three appeals carry the weight: ethos, why you should trust me; pathos, what you should feel; logos, why it follows. The mistake almost everyone makes is to stop at listing devices. A rhetorical analysis is not an inventory — it answers how this piece works on THIS audience towards THIS goal, and that means you have to know who was being asked and what for. Five tabs — cards for the appeals and the devices, hints with the analysis questions, a quiz that makes you say what an appeal was doing, and a workshop where you sort appeals, order an analysis, label a speech and take one apart.
Four moves from one speech: a head teacher asking parents to fund a school bus. Before naming a single device, ask who is being spoken to.
A rhetorical analysis is not a list of devices. Name the audience, name what they are being asked to do, and name the obstacle — why they have not done it already. Only then take the devices one at a time and say how each answers that obstacle. A device with no because attached is an inventory, not an analysis.
What people get wrong
⚠️People often think…
The writer uses anaphora, a rhetorical question and a tricolon. That is my analysis.
That is an inventory. A device has no fixed effect — anaphora at a protest builds collective pressure, and the identical device in a eulogy slows time and makes a life feel unhurried. The name reports the shape of the tool and says nothing about what was built with it. Every device in an answer needs a because.
Same tool, opposite jobs. The audience decides which.
⚠️People often think…
This appeals to emotion, so it is manipulative.
Some situations warrant feeling, and prose about a famine that raises no horror has described it badly. The test is not whether emotion is raised but whether it fits the case: pathos is earned when the feeling belongs to this situation, and borrowed when it is imported from another to do work the evidence has not done.
Ask what you are being made to feel, and whether this situation warrants it.
⚠️People often think…
She admitted a weakness, so she must be arguing badly.
The opposite. An audience assumes a persuader is hiding the weak parts, so volunteering one makes a speaker stop sounding like an advocate and start sounding like a witness. It costs almost nothing and buys a great deal — which is why the sentence immediately after a concession is always the one to read twice.
Watch what the bought trust gets spent on.
Audience, purpose, obstacle, then devices
1Watch one
A council leaflet urges residents to sort their recycling. Residents already believe recycling matters. Work out what the leaflet must do.
Audience: residents who already agree with the goal. So no logos about why recycling matters — that argument is already won.
Purpose: not to change a belief but to change a habit — sorting, every week, without being reminded.
Obstacle: effort and doubt about whether it works. They suspect it all goes in one lorry anyway.
So the leaflet needs logos aimed at the doubt — where the lorries actually go — and ethos for the suspicion, probably a concession: “we did not sort it properly ourselves until 2023.”
2Do one with me
Name the appeal each move makes.
“I have taught here nineteen years” is
“Amara is nine, and she walks it in the dark” is
“£9,400 a year is £4.90 a month per family” is
💬One sentence, then you move on
Why does naming a device earn almost nothing on its own?
3Try one
Before the devices, you must name the audience, the purpose and the ____. One word.
I want a hint first
It is the reason they have not acted already.
💬Last one — then you're done here
Why does admitting a fault make a speaker MORE persuasive, not less?
Where this goes
Where this lives
A charity letter, a manager announcing a change, a candidate at a door, a friend asking a favor. Every one has an audience, an ask, and something in the way — and the shape of what they say is decided by the third one.
What this feeds
Next room: the finest scale of all. A comma decides who is being addressed, and can change what a sentence asserts.
Find something persuasive today and name the obstacle it is working against.
One card at a time — tap “Show me” to check yourself, then Next. Start at Foundation; when those feel easy, climb.
Helpful Hints
⚡ The one idea
A rhetorical analysis is not a list of devices. Naming anaphora earns nothing on its own, because the question is always what the anaphora DID — to whom, and towards what. Before you write a word, answer three things: who is the audience, what is the speaker asking them to do, and what stands in the way of their doing it. Every device in the piece is an answer to that obstacle, and once you can see the obstacle the devices stop being decoration and start being moves.
📐 The three appeals
Appeal
It says
Looks like
Ethos
trust me
credentials, shared values, admitting a fault
Pathos
feel this
a named person, an image, a fear, a memory
Logos
it follows
figures, causes, a comparison, an if-then
🎯 Three questions before you start
Audience — who is actually being spoken to? Not everyone. Someone.
Purpose — what are they being asked to do, believe or allow?
Obstacle — why have they not already done it?
🔧 Five devices worth knowing
Device
What it is
What it is for
Anaphora
the same opening, repeated
builds pressure; makes a list feel inevitable
Antithesis
two opposites in one balanced shape
forces a choice between exactly two things
Rhetorical question
a question with one allowed answer
makes the listener supply the conclusion
Tricolon
three parallel items
sounds complete; three feels like the whole set
Concession
granting the other side a point
buys trust, then spends it on the next claim
⚖️ Earned or manipulative?
An appeal is not bad because it is emotional. Pathos is earned when the feeling it raises is the one the situation actually warrants, and manipulative when it is borrowed from a different situation — a photograph of a child used to sell a policy that will not help children. The test is the same for ethos: credentials are earned when they are relevant to the claim, and manipulative when they are not. A surgeon speaking about surgery has ethos; a surgeon speaking about tax policy has a job.
🎯 How you will be asked
“Analyse the rhetorical choices the writer makes to achieve her purpose.”
“What is the effect of the repetition in lines 14–20?”
“Why does the speaker concede a point to her opponents?”
“Identify the intended audience and explain how you know.”
“Evaluate the effectiveness of the appeal in the final paragraph.”
✅ Before the test, can you…
Name the audience and the action being asked for, in one sentence?
Say what obstacle the speaker is working against?
Explain what a device DID, rather than naming it?
Say why a speaker conceded a point on purpose?
Judge an appeal as earned or borrowed, and give your reason?
Pick your level
Look back at anything you missed — the hint that appeared is exactly what to reread tonight.
How sure did you feel?
Workshop
Work like a reader who can see the plan: sort twelve moves by the appeal they make, order a rhetorical analysis, label a speech, then take one apart for an audience, a purpose and an obstacle.
Your practice never leaves this device. There is no account and no sign-in. Your work is saved in this browser only, and you can erase it whenever you want.
Your practice record — saved on this device
This is your record of the module on screen — it stays here and goes nowhere. Independent means you got it right on the first tap; supported means you got it after the explain-and-retry, or marked ‘I had it’ on a revealed answer. Both count, and neither is a grade. If your teacher asks, copy the row or show them this screen.
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Explained in own words
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The answer key is for a teacher: it prints only from here, for the unit on screen. Print the study packet prints the study pages and a blank quiz — never the answers.