Reinforcing Ethos, Logos, and Pathos in Grammar Instruction & Practice

Katie Subra, subr0054@umn.edu

Infusing CBI & TBI into the Language Classroom:

Speed Dating Warm Up What content sources do you use in your

classroom to teach grammar? (Ex: Newspapers, Videos, Pictures, Textbooks from other fields, Research articles, fiction…)

How do you provide grammatical feedback for your students in a way that promotes future results or revision practice in speaking or writing? (washback)

How do you put the power of self-correction, self-editing, and grammatical awareness into your students' hands?

How do you introduce a new topic to your students? What steps you take?

How do you make an emotional connection between your students and the content while teaching grammar?

Modes of Persuasion through Cartoons: EthosEthos: plays on the credibility of the author (is he an expert watchmaker talking about a famous watch or a pro basketball player talking about his sport?)

Modes of Persuasion through Cartoons: LogosLogos: uses logic to convince (facts, statistics, and charts all fall within logos)

Modes of Persuasion through Cartoons: PathosPathos: plays on the emotions of the audience (using a tearjerker story to sway people to your side)

Let me persuade you about the importance of the Modes of Persuasion in grammar.

Ethos: You will not always be there with your students. Provide students with grammatical awareness without preventing communicative functions as they are learning.

Logos: By demonstrating a step-by-step

approach to deconstructing grammar, you are providing a framework for understanding the language. By using relevant content, you are modeling uses of the grammar so that students can produce it in new contexts.

Pathos: "The research shows" that students learn better when they are emotionally engaged with the content.

Brainstorming Ethos in Grammar

How do you put the power of self-correction, self-editing, and grammatical awareness into your students' hands?

Logos in Grammar

How do you introduce a new topic to your students? What steps you take?

Pathos in Grammar

How do you make an emotional connection between your students and the content while teaching grammar?

Example 1: Grammar Analysis PaperEthos: Raising awareness through an

academic analysis of common English Language Learner grammatical errors:

Only Child Only child is good or bad? In fact in

China most family only have one child, my mother also only have one child, so I don't have any brothers. Not like America most families has more than two children. I think only having one child, sometimes is good and sometimes is bad.

Example 1: Grammar Analysis PaperLogos: Providing a step-by-step

framework1. Step 1: Read student paper and identify the

errors. Focus on the grammatical topics covered in class (i.e. Tense, PoS, SVA, Possessives, Modals, Gerunds, Questions, Affirmative/Negative Statements,… varies by level)

2. Step 2: Meet in class to share your errors and corrections with classmates. Analyze the types of errors that you found. Discuss corrections and grammar rules.

3. Step 3: Begin writing your analysis. Refer to the textbook page(s) that state the grammatical rules you are focusing on. Use bold font to highlight the error and the correction within the context of the sentence.

Example 1: Grammar Analysis PaperEthos, Logos, but where is Pathos? Objectives:• Apply grammatical knowledge to an authentic

situation—student writing• Raise awareness about L2 global errors (errors

that interfere with comprehensibility) vs. local errors

• Develop autonomous grammar learning strategies in students

• Empower students to correct grammar mistakes in the writing of their peers (this will eventually empower them to correct their own errors which are similar to their peers)

• Reinforce the conventions of academic writing: citing sources, quote integration, and parenthetical situation

Example 2: Examining Popular Sources Newsprint Literature/Poetry Comics Videos Corpora Advertisements Photos

How can each of these utilize Ethos, Logos, and Pathos?

Newsprint: Use current newsprint articles to create a

cloze exercise or, again have students describe the grammatical usage.  Voice of America is one good source for intermediate level students as it adapts current news articles for a L2 audience:  http://learningenglish.voanews.com/

A more advanced group of students may want to use an international news source.

Example: VOA English "Program provides Food, Farming Education to Urban Poor" 

Directions: 1) Read the excerpt. Circle all of the nouns. 2) Put the nouns into 4 columns according to which article is used (a/an/the/0). 3) Add the nouns to other columns if you can write example sentences using them with different articles. 4) Explain the rule."At Common Good we tried to stick to 85-15, so 85 percent of the food we grow are distributed within the community, then 15 percent we sell to local restaurants and a mobile farmers' market that comes once a week." Companies donate seeds to the farm.  They are also harvested from the farm’s greenhouse.  Community members, staff and volunteers grow them in a garden built on an old baseball field.

Thematic Poetry + Cloze Use thematic poetry and ask students to

either complete a cloze exercise or simply describe the rationale behind each article's use in the poem.  

A great resource for this is the Poetry Foundation:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238450

Music lyrics can be used the same way. Example: "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesFor hundred miles through desert,

repenting.You only have to let soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about your despair, yours, and I

will tell you mine.Meanwhile world goes on.Meanwhile sun and clear pebbles of rainare moving

across landscapes,over prairies and deep trees, mountains and rivers.Meanwhile wild

geese, high in clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like wild geese, harsh and exciting --over and over announcing your place

in family of things.

Comics:

1. Find a comic strip or graphic novel appropriate for the target grammar/vocabulary. You can also use pictures or ads!

2. Remove the text.3. Provide students with a list of

required grammatical structures or vocabulary to use.

↵Example:Question: Use a modal to fill in

the speech bubble (should, can, would, must, ought, could…)

Answer: "You shouldn't expect a note in a bottle to get you off a deserted island!"

Movie Segments to Assess Grammar http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.

blogspot.com/search/label/articles You can search for different tenses and parts

of speech and it will provide modern movie clips that use that grammatical element and it also provides some semi-decent worksheets to go along with the clips.

Corpora Corpora can be used to present authentic

examples of article use.  Students or teachers can search for parts of speech in real contexts that are collected from news and academic sources  

For example: A search for 'the' in 'spoken context' comes up with thousands of real, quoted texts:  http://corpus.byu.edu/

Students can compare spoken vs. written, formal vs. informal uses

AdvertisementsTitle: Write the name of the product hereColor & Mood (List the main colors that are used and

write an adjective to describe the mood that they show.)

A. B…Items used in Image in Addition to Product (List all

items in the picture that are not the actual product being sold. If you can, write why those items are used.)

A.B…Cultural (Mis)Interpretations (Think of two-three

different messages that this advertisement is trying to tell the audience.)

A.B.

Teaching students to use Ethos, Logos & Pathos for grammar practice Students can use these modes of persuasion

to improve their own language. Ask students to analyze their own use of

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos while speaking or writing. In which situations is it appropriate to use

each of these? Ex: debates, persuasive writing, conversation

What is the specific language that must be used to convey these ideas? Ex: modals, "according to/recent polls show" (using credible research sources) 3rd person

When is it inappropriate to use each of these? Ex: questioning authority, using these tactics unethically

Resources Docimo, K. Storyboard That. "Teaching Rhetoric

with Ethos, Logos, and Pathos" (2014). Retrieved from: http://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/education/writing/ethos-pathos-lagos#sthash.OBD8rpjp.dpuf

Finley, T. Edutopia. "Writing with Ethos, Logos, and Pathos in 21st Century Authentic Texts" (March 9, 2012). Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ethos-logos-pathos-21st-century-todd-finley

Grammar Resources: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/http://learningenglish.voanews.com/ http://corpus.byu.edu/ http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/