Persuasive Writing
English 425.02: Portnoy

Modified Version of Exercise #2, page 277

Arrangement Exercise

Follow the directions for Exercise #2 on page 277 of Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, and look for three or four speeches. We're going to focus on speeches because the short essays that easily would be available online at newspaper or magazine website probably will be too short to include each of these parts. Your paper should be around eight pages, so you will need to think about arrangement in a different way than if you were writing a short editorial column.

Write two or three sentences about each speech. Did you find examples of insinuations, narratives, partitions, and perorations? Provide the title, rhetor, year, and web address for each speech (you do not need to do a formal bibliography for this exercise--just write the address).

Also, print an example of each of the four parts listed above. If you can't find one speech with all four parts, print an example of each part from different speeches. We'll talk about some of these in class on Wednesday.

This exercise may be handwritten rather than typed if you like, but please remember to write very legibly. The assignment is due at the start of class on November 28.