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Maria Gamez Garcia

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

October 3, 2021

Effective Rhetorical Strategies

When you’re trying to write an effective and persuasive essay, the way that rhetorical

strategies are used plays an important role when it comes to the audience and the message that

you’re trying to convey. As an example, in the book of Waves, two of the essays that are within

the book use rhetorical strategies like Ethos, the appeal to credibility, Pathos, which appeals to

emotions, and Logos, the appeal to reason. Except, only one of them delivers the message more

effectively. There’s the author of “Curving the Spread: how lockdowns are helping” Khushi

Virval, who had some strong rhetorical strategies in his essay but others that weren’t as

persuasive and effective as expected. However, Andrew Armitage, the author of “Election

reform in the United States” was able to project the rhetorical strategies more effectively by

providing evidence from credible sources, appealing to the emotions of the audience in a way

that everyone can relate, and displaying the consequences of what happens with the current state

of the electoral college.

To begin, even though Virval does provide a good argument about lockdowns helping

stop the spread of the virus, the way he used his rhetorical strategies could have been more

effective to persuade and attract his audience. To try building credibility as an author, Virval

used personal experience on lockdowns. Using personal experience on essays like this one is

something that can be used to build credibility as an author, but in this case, it didn’t seem as

effective as it was expected. He says, “my family back in India shared video clips showing the
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country’s strict implementation of lockdown rules, as well as the strict supervision of policemen

on the streets.” (Virval 29) this could have made people ignore and not consider that information

because they couldn’t relate to it as it was from another place than where they could have been

reading. His use of why lockdowns helped was good for most of the essay, but he could have

talked more about how lockdowns were helping or not in the United States a bit more, as it

would have had appealed more to his audience there and made his argument stronger and more

effective. He talks mostly about lockdowns in other places around the world, but he could have

made emphasis on the country he was writing to, either on what they were doing right to protect

from getting sick or what they were doing wrong or could improve at doing to decrease the

number of positive cases. Virval also appealed to emotions well throughout the essay, however,

he could have tried to appeal more to people who were against the lockdowns because they could

have related less to his argument since it seemed more for people who were pro lockdowns.

Trying to get to the audience that is against lockdowns was probably what he needed to make it

more effective.

On the other hand, you have Andrew Armitage, who uses the rhetorical strategies in a

much more effective way. He provides evidence from credible sources to support his argument.

He quotes from an article that comes from the “Southern Poverty Law Center” that gives him

credibility as he talks about political topics and supports with evidence that comes from a source

that can be reliable. The appeal to reason is also effective in his essay as he says that “… media

coverage of the Electoral College has portrayed states as either ‘Red’ or ‘Blue’” (Armitage 18)

and delivers with more details on why the election reform is needed, because it appeals to people

knowing what the “red” or “blue” states mean. The appeal to emotions could be the most

effective one at the beginning of the essay, as it makes people understand what he’s trying to say.
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He says that the Electoral College “… sows polarization and divisiveness… essentially

subjecting the American ideal” (Armitage 18) which is that everyone is equal and that causes the

audience to feel like the government is failing to follow that ideal. The use of these strategies

helps Armitage’s essay be more successful in persuading his audience emotionally.

That being said, both essays count with important information for the audience to

understand and appeal to their points and what they’re trying to come across. For instance, both

of these essays include statistics that help the reader understand more about their topic, as Virval

includes information about the cases of COVID-19 as he says, “there are over 57.8 million

positive cases globally” (Virval 28). Armitage also wrote about how in past times the popular

vote didn’t matter for who would win the presidency as he says that “there have been five

instances in which a presidential candidate won the election without the popular vote” (Armitage

18). As well, Virval appealed to the audience emotionally when he talked about the people lost

due to the COVID-19 virus saying, “1.3 million people had died of COVID-19” (Virval 28).

Armitage used emotions effectively when he talked about ex-president Donald Trump’s time in

office to include the amount of hate crimes that increased after his election. All these are reasons

on how and why these rhetorical strategies worked to support their arguments.

For these reasons the way that the rhetorical strategies of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are

used is important for supporting the arguments you want to make. These two authors did a fairly

good job trying to support the arguments they wanted to expose their audience to. However, the

way that Andrew Armitage used his rhetorical strategies ended being more effective for his essay

than how Khushi Virval used the same strategies for his essay. They had different subjects and

tried to be as persuasive as possible. Unfortunately, Virval wasn’t very effective in some ways

when he used the strategies for his essay, even though he did do a fairly good job at his
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explanations, examples and citations on his essay, trying to make his point and support the

argument he made. Nevertheless, Armitage was more effective at appealing to the reading

audience of the essay and making his point stand out during the entire essay.
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Works Cited

Armitage, Andrew “Election reform in the United States.” WAVES, edited by Amber

Norwood, 4th ed, Macmillan Learning, 2021, pg 18 – 21

Virval, Khushi. “Curving the Spread: how lockdowns are helping” WAVES, edited by

Amber Norwood, 4th ed, Macmillan Learning, 2021, pg 28 - 30