Examples

Bonita · Member

Examples

Date: Sep 28, 2006

Hi Bonita---I just wanted to pop in quickly to tell you my ideas on where I was planning to search out examples. I have not had a chance to search through it completely, but I plan to use Mr. Kern's own Quiddity blog as well as some writings from the Memoria Press web site. I'm using a book I picked up at our library book sale for $1 called Good Reasons (Faigley & Seltzer) and it gives examples of ways analyzing the writings of others for their arguments. Off the top of my head, it gave Dr. Martin Luther King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail as an example of the use of narrative argument. The writers also refer to a little book you may be able to find at your library called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which uses fable/narrative arguments, definition arguments, and evaluation and comparison to argue as well. I'm sure as I come to understand each one of these topics better, finding examples will become a whole lot easier because then I'll know what exactly to look for.

I do hope this helps you. I have a 15yos (soon to be 16) who has an expressive/receptive language delay and does not naturally intuit organization either, but materials that explicitly teach this, such as the LTOW, have opened up a whole new world for him.

Look forward to sharing more.

Tawne

Date: Sep 28, 2006

Thank you Tawne. I'll look for the resources you suggested. We subscribe to World magazine, which is chock full of excellent essays by various editors. I'm going to see if those essays will work.

Bonita

akern · Veteran Member

Tawne

Your comments about the value of LTW for your son are priceless to us. Thank you.

I think the best one location place to find samples is probably Edward PJ Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. In addition, we plan to post examples of student's writings on our web site in the near future. Visit the site from time to time to look for them.

I know the site is a little confusing right now. It will be redesigned and reformatted sometime around the middle of October. Keep your eyes open!

As for using the Quiddity blog, you are welcome to do so, but please understand that the blog is more like a conversation than carefully crafted writing. It's more dialectical than rhetorical. Except for Martin Cothran's material. He tends to be much more craftsman about his entries.

If you find examples of any use of a topic, a format, a scheme, a trope, a nominalization, etc. that you think we would be able to use, please don't hesitate to post them. You could put them in here if you wanted to. Otherwise, examples@circeinstitute.org will be glad to receive them.

Finally, check out the wonderful silva rhetoricae web site at BYU. It has a couple examples for every manner of scheme or trope along with definitions etc. A very nice resource for a classical writing teacher.

Thanks!

Leah · Member

I have just started looking for examples, but here is one I found today:

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/12220

I believe that this essay from World Mag includes an exordium (quote), parrallelism in the second paragraph, possibly a narrative ?(the narrative background info on Abraham and Sarah...) and I think you can find an amplification in the conclusion.

Leah

akern · Veteran Member

I recently read a beautiful example of an essay built on definition and comparison. It was called Joyas Voluntudas or something like that and it is about the heart of a hummingbird with a short comparison with the heart of a whale. You can find it at any serious bookstore in the volume of essays called "The best american essays of 2005."

Kendall · Member

I enjoyed the Joyas Voladoras essay that you mentioned. Am I correct in noticing that it does not have an exordium?

I enjoyed reading the essay that follows it titled Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog. If you have the book handy and have time I would like help figuring out where the exordium ends. Is it the end of the 1st or 2nd paragraph?

I'm sitting here with most of the books mentioned

The Best American Essays 2005

Good Reasons

Oxford Book of Essays

I'm skimming and spending lots of time and not recognizing or not finding the exordium in many of them. I would be very grateful for article titles from these books that you have used for Module 4.

Thanks,

Kendall

Leah · Member

Hi Kendall,

I don't have any of those books mentioned, but I found that great speeches are good for teaching exordiums. One that a class just looked at was Roosevelt's speech from 12/8/1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. By looking at these speeches, my students seemed to grasp the main ideas of the exordium.

Leah

Kendall · Member

Leah,

Thanks so much! I printed that speech and another and we will look at them. Your suggestion to use speeches reminded me that our new singles pastor has clear openings in his sermons so I think we will listen to the first part of those as well.

I think one problem I am having in the essays I have read is that of not recognizing the topic sentence and that makes it hard to see where the opening stops.

Thanks again,

Kendall

Leah · Member

Hello Kendall,

I hope they help, but I just realized that I used the speeches for the amplification, not exordium. I manage to keep the terms straight most of the time.

For exordiums, I did find a couple of essays in World, but they where few and far between. I also found some in the Best Travel Essays of 2005 (I am a big fan of travel essays!). Most of these are anecdotes of course.

I am on the look-out for a very effective question opener. I think that students tend to fall back on that one as the easiest exordium and I am being much stricter on whether it actually relates to the reader. I'd love a few excellent examples of this one!

Leah

Here is an example of my students' recent exordiums-for the most part they loved the creativity it allowed. :)

The Working Age Should be Lowered

Recently I was strolling through the mall when I spotted the perfect pair of shoes. I placed them on the counter and looked in to my wallet. Three dollars. I was unable to buy the perfect pair of shoes. If I had had a job and was able to earn money on a consistent basis, this tragedy might not have happened. Every kid I know would like to be able to make money on a steady basis, and that is why we should lower the working age. Three reasons for lowering the working age are parents wouldn't have to be so financially responsible for their kids, kids would have a better retirement, and families would have a higher income. ...