After reading “In Praise of the ‘F’ Word” written by Mary Sherry I can tell you first hand that she did an exceptional job using rhetoric to make the readers believe what she believes. Although she used all three,ethos,logos,and pathos, she mainly used ethos and pathos to not only get her point across but to also persuade the audience.
To begin, Mary Sherry used very little logos, but when she did she used it in a very powerful and effective way. In the very first sentence of the speech she says a shocking statistic, “Tens of thousands of eighteen year olds will graduate this year and be handed meaningless diplomas.” Using a statistic is a big attention-getter, but using a big number as a statistic really makes your audience listen. The placement of this statistic is also perfect. She used it at the beginning to make her audience listen from the, and it worked!
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In the second paragraph she states, “Eventually a fortunate few will find their way into educational repair shops-adult literacy programs,such as the one where I teach basic grammar and writing.” This gives her a tremendous amount of credibility and expertise in this speech. Not only does she gain credibility by working in the education field, but she gains credibility because she works with the kids that have been failed by the education system. In the third paragraph she talks about how she found out first hand with her own son that when a teacher threatens to flunk a student they work harder and obtain the skills they need to