Today we're going to take a look at the syntax of our presidential candidates. Kenton Murray, a PhD student at Notre Dame University, analyzed all the presidential candidates speech patterns during the primary debates. He looked at their use of imperatives, indicative and conditional phrases. He also provides visuals for other parts of syntax: syllables, periodic sentences, and sentence types. Kenton provides graphs for each of his analyses. You can read the article here: A Computational Linguistic Analysis of the 2016 Presidential Candidates   You can use this with your students in a variety of ways: Jigsaw -- split your students into 3 groups: syllables, periodic sentences, and sentence types. Ask them to analyze and share with their students Writing -- assign your students to write a speech mimicking certain speech patterns, then ask them to read them in front of the class Media -- find clips and transcripts online of the candidate's speeches that Kenton examines. Split your students into groups and assign one to analyze the syntax through listening to the audio, and the other to analyze through reading the transcript. What are the differences in their analysis?   If you've done this with your students, let us know in the comments below! ... View more

This week was the first presidential debate; it was schedule 46 years and 1 day after the first televised debate -- the now-famous one between Nixon and Kennedy.   You can download a Debate Scorecard​ to use with your students here if you'd like to give them a rhetoric assignment for the next presidential debate. Or, you can use the Debate Scorecard to look back at time to that first televised debate. Find a video of the debate on YouTube here, and then tell your students to analyze the candidates. Here are 3 ways to use this video with your students:   Split your students into 2 groups. Ask one group to watch the debate with no sound, ask the second to listen to the audio only while they complete their scorecard. Compare their answers and discuss. Split your students into pairs. Ask one to focus on Nixon, and the other to focus on Kennedy. What are the differences in their scorecard? Ask your students to watch the debate, and write a quick reflection it; then ask them to read this article from the National Constitution Center on how it changed history. Tell them to continue their reflection after knowing more on the history of the debate.   Did you use the debate scorecard with your students? Let us know how it worked in the comments! ... View more

This article is a great jumping off point when talking about persona. A social media profile is the very personification of the concept of "persona." Tell your students to examine recent tweets from presidential candidates (maybe without showing which candidate has tweeted!) - what are the differences between the two persona's? Look at some celebrities, authors, and other common figures - what does each their social media say about their personality? Ask your students to think how characters in recent novels would portray themselves on their social media accounts. How does that persona differ from their personality?   ARTICLE: http://nyti.ms/2byeLqe The ​New York Times ... View more