Course: English Composition (ENGL 1A) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Lindgren
Module: Week 6 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, two 75-minute sessions
Objective covered: Objective 4 — Compose in multiple rhetorical modes, using the rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos).

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 6 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that drips out when the module opens. Dates below assume a Tuesday/Thursday session pattern with Week 6 meeting Tue Oct 6 and Thu Oct 8, and end-of-week work due Sunday Oct 11, 11:59 p.m. Adjust the day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 6 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 6: Rhetorical Analysis

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

This is a major-essay week. Back in Week 2 you learned to say what a text says (summary) and what you think of it (response). This week we add the move every analysis paper turns on: explaining how a text works on its readers. We're not asking whether you agree with the speech you'll read — we're asking how it persuades. The tools are the four classical appeals — ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), logos (logic), and kairos (timing/occasion) — and the named devices (like anaphora) a writer uses to deliver them.

You'll analyze a real, famous, fully-archived speech — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" (1963) — linked at its authoritative home. You read and listen to it there; we never reproduce it here. And this week, more than any so far, you build the course's most important habit: verify every quotation against the real text — because the major danger in AI-assisted analysis is a chatbot that invents a line the speaker never said.

The week's big question

"Not do I agree — but how does this text persuade? Which appeals does it use, through which moves, and to what effect on its audience?"

By Friday you'll be able to name and define ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos; tell analysis of strategy apart from summary and agreement; spot a device like anaphora; and turn one verified moment from a real speech into a claim → evidence → analysis-of-effect.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all four out loud, you're ready for the quiz.

• [ ] Name and define the four appeals — ethos (credibility/character), pathos (emotion), logos (logic/evidence), and kairos (the right moment/occasion) — and identify which appeal a given passage uses.
• [ ] Tell analysis apart from summary and agreement — "the author uses pathos" is not analysis until you say how and to what effect.
• [ ] Name a rhetorical device at work (e.g., anaphora — repeating a phrase at the start of successive clauses) and connect it to the appeal it serves.
• [ ] Build one analytical move on a real text — claim about strategy → a verified moment as evidence → analysis of how it works on the audience.

What's due this week, and when

Work these in order — each one gets you ready for the next.

Heads-up on the AI work: this week the AI-critique moment gets real teeth. Ask a chatbot to "analyze the rhetoric of 'I Have a Dream'" and it will sound authoritative — and it will sometimes hand you a quotation King never said or attribute a line to the wrong place. Your job is to catch it by checking every quote against the archived speech. The tool drafts; the writer verifies.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late. This is a major essay — start early, bring a draft to office hours, and leave real time to revise. Writing improves most through revision.

How to succeed this week

• Lead with the question, not the jargon. "Rhetorical analysis" just means: how is this text trying to persuade its readers, and does it work? The appeals are your toolkit for answering it.
• Memorize one tiny hook. "Ethos = credibility · Pathos = emotion · Logos = logic · Kairos = timing." (Aristotle gave us the first three; kairos is the fourth — the right moment.)
• Don't summarize, and don't argue back. Naming an appeal isn't analysis ("the author uses pathos" — so what?). Analysis explains how the move works and what effect it has on the audience. And you analyze how it persuades whether or not you personally agree.
• Read the real speech yourself — twice. You cannot analyze (or fact-check a chatbot) on a text you haven't actually read. The speech is short, free, and linked.
• Quote tiny and quote exactly. When you cite a phrase, copy it word-for-word from the archived text and keep it short. Never paste a "quote" a chatbot gave you without checking it against the source.

You don't need any background for this week beyond Week 2's summary/response move — just a real speech and a willingness to ask how, not whether I agree. Come to class ready to argue about which appeal does the heaviest lifting. See you Tuesday.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Module 6

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 0 days), i.e., Tue Oct 6, 2026 — not before. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Tue Oct 6."

Subject: Week 6 — how a speech persuades (and catching the AI that fakes a quote) 🎙️

Hi everyone,

This is one of my favorite weeks — and a major-essay week, so read this twice. We've spent five weeks on your writing and on reading texts fairly. This week we ask a sharper question about someone else's writing: not whether we agree with it, but how it works on us.

Our text is one of the most analyzed speeches in American history — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" (1963), linked at its archive so you can read and hear it. Our tools are the four appeals: ethos (does the speaker earn our trust?), pathos (how does it move us?), logos (what's the logic and evidence?), and kairos (why this moment?). And we'll name the devices — like the anaphora of "I have a dream that one day…" repeated to build a rising wave of hope — that deliver those appeals.

Four things not to miss:
1. Read/listen to the speech first. You can't analyze a text — or catch a chatbot's mistakes about it — if you haven't read it. It's short and free; the link is in the module.
2. Assignment 6 is THE RHETORICAL ANALYSIS ESSAY — a 100-point major essay. Your thesis is about strategy (how the speech persuades), backed by verified evidence from the text. Start early.
3. Lecture Tutorial 6, Quiz 6, Discussion 6, and Writing Studio 6 also close Sun Oct 11 — the discussion and studio both work directly with the speech.
4. The signature warning: when you ask AI to "analyze this speech," it will sometimes invent a quotation or attribute a line to the wrong speaker. Catching that — by checking every quote against the archived text — is the most important habit this course teaches.

One promise: by Friday you'll never again write "the author uses pathos" and stop there. You'll say how, and to what effect — the move that separates analysis from a book report.

Bring the speech (and a healthy skepticism of any quote you didn't verify) to class on Tuesday.

See you soon,
Prof. Lindgren