Introduction
I have decided to choose the topic “Pros and cons of distant education.” In this essay, I am going to explore the psychological, physical, and educational aspects of online education. On the one hand, such an educational format can help to improve the pandemic situation and to provide equal opportunities to study. On the other hand, children can lack socialization when they do not communicate with their classmates. The essay can be addressed both to the children and parents for whom the issues of health and psychology are important. While writing the essay, I am going to follow different rhetoric strategies and avoid the fallacies that would make my essay less logical. Moreover, I am going to appeal to the audience’s minds and feelings, thus conveying the message from different points of view.
Logos, Ethos, and Pathos
Logos, ethos, and pathos are the focuses that have been described by Aristotle and that are supposed to be addressed in any rhetoric speech. Logos appeals to logic and uses arguments that make the audience think in a certain way (Saaty, 2020). It is aimed at the logical persuasion of an opponent supported by facts. Ethos appeals to the audience’s morals and ethics, influencing the opponent’s opinion via the reference to authority or to the credibility of beliefs. Pathos appeals to the opponent’s emotions and aims at influencing the beliefs of the audience through feelings.
As for my essay, I am going to make an accent on logos, using the arguments that are proved by science and peer-reviewed sources. A smaller appeal I would make to pathos, pointing, on the one hand, at the difficulties in the adaptation that schoolchildren experience. On the other hand, I would point to bigger problems that can occur to children that did not have any chance to develop their communicative skills in class. An ethos part could contain a question about whether it is ethical at all to force a child to go to an environment they do not like when there is an opportunity to study online.
Five Canons of Rhetoric
Five tenets, or canons, of rhetoric, were first described by Cicero, an ancient Roman philosopher. Among these canons, there are arrangement, invention, style, delivery, and memory (Madson, 2018). These are the ways of making the speech inventing process more efficient. The first canon is the invention, which refers to searching material for the text. As for the chosen topic, different psychological resources can be analyzed. Academic and peer-reviewed sources should be used, which would make the arguments stronger.
As for the arrangement, I would order the material according to the demands of an argumentative essay. The essay should have an introduction, a body with arguments for and against distant education, and a conclusion. As for the style, academic standards should be met when writing an essay. Memory and delivery tenets are not applicable to writing an essay, as they are used in oral speech.
Logical Fallacies to Avoid
The main logical fallacies that should be avoided in an essay are ad hominem, a straw man, and a slippery slope. When the writer uses an ad hominem fallacy, a person under question is attacked instead of the arguments. A straw man fallacy means that the arguments opposed to the defended point of view are oversimplified. Thus, the arguments are distorted, which makes the whole essay illogical (El Khoiri & Widiati, 2017). As for the chosen topic, the arguments should be supported by real quantitative and qualitative statistics which would prove the positive or negative influence of distance education on children. A slippery slope in rhetoric means an assumption that a single event will be followed by a certain chain of inevitable events.
Conclusion
Thus, the essay should be prepared considering not only factual information concerning distance education but also considering different rhetorical strategies. Three of five canons of rhetoric can be useful while preparing the material and arranging it in proper order. Besides, during the writing process, different logical fallacies should be avoided. All these strategies can help to convey the message to the audience in a proper manner.
References
El Khoiri, N., & Widiati, U. (2017). Logical Fallacies in Indonesian EFL Learners’ Argumentative Writing: Students’ Perspectives. Dinamika Ilmu, 17(1), 71—81.
Madson, M. (2018). Five-Canon Feedback: Triaging Errors in Writing With Classical Rhetoric. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 49(2), 57–59. Web.
Saaty, A. (2020). The Rhetoric of Twitter in terms of the Aristotelian Appeals (“Logos, Ethos, and Pathos”) in ESL/EFL Educational Settings. English Language Teaching, 13(5), 115–124.