09.04 - Ethos & Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream"

We started today's class by reviewing what ethos, pathos, and logos were. We then narrowed our focus to ethos specifically. We looked at how the anti-bullying speech (given out yesterday) uses ethos and we reviewed the different ways that ethos can be incorporated into an argument. Next, everyone wrote an argument around the following statement and used ethos as their main appeal.

The school day should be changed to go from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Individuals shared their argument with a partner then had time to revise it. We shared and discussed several of these revised arguments.

Next, we listened to and read Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, annotating the text for uses of ethos. After listening to the speech everyone responded to some provided reading questions to focus their analysis of the speech. Questions 1-3 should be completed as homework (everyone had time to start this work in class). We will look at question 4 tomorrow in class.

Handouts:
Transcript of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech
Reading response questions for "I Have a Dream."

Appeals - Ethos

Three Types of Appeals (Ethos, Logos, Pathos)

Anti-Bullying Speech (shows different appeals in action)