10.23.07
For your edification
The other day in Grammar, we took the writing section from a practice THEA test. This test is used for teaching certification, and was amusing simply because it was so facile. I probably could have passed the thing in 10th grade! Anyway, I’ve often enjoyed the short essays that they put in standardised tests, and I found one on this test that was fun in more ways than one. Okay, maybe funny’s not the right word. I mean, I found it to be funny, but the joke can only be described as inscribed – which is to say, “you probably won’t get it.” Nonetheless, it’s a poor man’s version of a lesson in rhetoric that might teach you a thing or two. It says some of the things I wanted to write about, but it does it using language that is probably more accessible than what I would have said. Oh, and it’s most definitely less insulting that I would’ve been. You’ll find the test item after the break. Read and learn.
Read the passage below, written in the style of a college communication textbook. Then answer the questions that follow.
1“Are we going to support this development project, or are we going to let this town become a howling wilderness?” 2Of course, this is a rhetorical question–no answer is really expected. 3It is also a fallacious question, based on a false assumption. 4Clearly, the speaker is attempting to persuade a person not by logic, but by deceit. 5This and similar rhetorical tricks are known as “informal fallacies.”
6The informal fallacies that public speakers sometimes employ to sway an audience include such techniques as making appeals to emotions (arousing feelings of anger, for example), special pleading (presenting only one side of a question), and making faulty analogies (treating two things as essentially similar even though they have significant differences). 7Although most informal fallacies are designed to cloud the issue being discussed, some can also be used to place an opponent on the defensive. 8____ 9The use of fallacious arguments may sometimes be effective, but it is never honest. 10Informal fallacies have no place in reasoned discussion.
27. Which of the following sentences, if added between parts 3 and 4 of the first paragraph, would be most consistent with the writer’s purpose and intended audience?
A. Despite the speaker’s implication, a town would not be reduced to a “howling wilderness” by its failure to support a development project.
B. I bet a lot of readers think that most towns would be better off if they had more “howling wilderness” and less development anyway
C. How could a speaker think anybody would fall for such a crazy argument?
D. It’s pretty obvious that the creator of that “howling wilderness” sentence was just trying to pull a fast one on us.
28. Which of the following sentences, if used in place of the blank line labeled Part 8, would best support the main idea of the second paragraph?
A. Newspaper editorials make use of many different rhetorical and persuasive devices, including informal fallacies.
B. It is no easy task, for example, to respond convincingly to the question, “Why do you think you’re the only important person in the room?”
C. The increased use of informal fallacies in writing and speaking reflects the fact that most people no longer believe that “honesty is the best policy.”
D. But public speakers do not always intend to persuade; speakers may also address an audience to inform, explain, demonstrate, or entertain.