Resources for Rhetorical Analysis Writing

In this article, you’ll find all the NoRedInk resources that can help your students develop strong rhetorical analysis writing skills. You can use NoRedInk to support students with every stage of the writing process, from practicing specific skills to planning, drafting, and revising full rhetorical analysis essays.

💡 Tip: These resources primarily support students writing about nonfiction prose texts and speeches. If your students are writing about fiction texts, check out our resources for Literary Analysis.

To help you choose and sequence activities, we’ve organized our resources below according to stages of the writing process:

Before drafting

• Practice activities and interactive tutorials help students master specific rhetorical analysis writing skills
• Quick Writes allow students to develop their skills with short written exercises
• Pre-writing worksheets help students plan their rhetorical analysis essays

Drafting rhetorical analysis essays

• Guided Draft assignments support students as they draft full rhetorical analysis essays
• Peer Review assignments help students practice embedding evidence in body paragraphs

Revising rhetorical analysis essays

• Guided Drafts allow you to leave feedback on students’ essays and request revisions
• Self Review supports students as they revise their work independently

You can also take advantage of NoRedInk’s Rhetorical Analysis Guided Draft essay plan, which leads students to draft full rhetorical analysis essays over the course of two weeks. Activities include a mix of pre-writing, scaffolded drafting, and targeted skill development. You can assign all of the activities, pick and choose the ones you want to assign, or just use this plan as inspiration!

Before drafting rhetorical analysis essays

Assign Practice to help students master rhetorical analysis writing skills

An engaging way to build or reinforce skills is via mastery-based Practice. Click below to see the pathways that teach students how to select strong evidence, how to use transitions, and more! 

Pathways for Rhetorical Analysis Writing 

💡 Note: Each pathway includes free and Premium topics. Click the links to view the selection of topics in each pathway.

• Body Paragraphs: Transition Words and Phrases
• Embedding Evidence: Avoiding Plagiarism and Using Citations
• Embedding Evidence: Mechanics of Quotations
• Embedding Evidence: Providing Strong Context for Evidence
• Conclusion Paragraphs
• Formal and Informal Language

To learn more about Practice on NoRedInk, check out this article. 

Use interactive tutorials to pre-teach or review rhetorical analysis skills

NoRedInk's interactive tutorials break writing concepts down into manageable chunks. If you’re preparing students to write an essay, consider assigning an interactive tutorial to give them a primer on the most important elements of strong rhetorical analysis writing. You can also assign tutorials for specific skills you'd like students to review.

To learn more about how you can use interactive tutorials, see this article.

Click the headers below to browse our rhetorical analysis writing tutorials! 

Writing Rhetorical Analysis Essays

•  Rhetorical Analysis Essay Overview
•  Introductions in Rhetorical Analysis Essays
•  Body Paragraphs in Rhetorical Analysis Essays
•  Conclusions in Rhetorical Analysis Essays

Sub-skills for Body Paragraphs

• Identifying Vague Words and Phrases
•  Recognizing Unnecessary Phrases
•  Plagiarism and Paraphrases
•  Context for Nonfiction Evidence: Evaluating Source Information and Reporting Verbs
•  Punctuating Quotations within Quotations

Sub-skills for Conclusions

• The Two Jobs of a Conclusion
•  Restating Your Argument in a Conclusion
•  “So What?” Statements

Using Formal Language in Essays

• Recognizing Language That Is Too Formal or Too Informal
•  Revising for Formality 

Develop rhetorical analysis writing skills with Quick Writes

Quick Writes are lightweight exercises that can serve a range of purposes, from developing specific writing skills to preparing for longer assignments. Click here to learn more about Quick Writes.

If you want your students to practice specific writing skills, browse NoRedInk’s skill-building prompts to find prompts to help students work on revising wordiness, using transitions, and more.

If your students are preparing to draft full essays, consider assigning a Quick Write to check they’re on the right track and give them feedback on their ideas. Here are some ideas for Quick Writes you could create to support students with pre-writing:

• Ask students to submit their thesis statement and topic sentences for review
• Get students to brainstorm rhetorical choices they could analyze in the text
• Have students plan one paragraph, like their first body paragraph

Click here to create your own Quick Write prompt! 

Use pre-writing worksheets to help students plan rhetorical analysis essays

Before students start writing their essays, set them up for success with these pre-writing materials! You can pick and choose the worksheets you think will most help to prepare your students for a Guided Drafts assignment, or use the full set together:

• Generating a Thesis
  • Helps students identify the author's purpose and rhetorical choices in order to land on a thesis
• Analyzing a Text to Develop a Thesis
  • Helps students analyze the rhetorical choices an author makes, selecting the choices that best support the author's purpose in order to develop a thesis
• Finding and Analyzing Evidence
  • Helps students collect evidence of an author's choices from a text and identify how these choices impact the audience and support the author's purpose
• Outlining
  • Supports students as they plan out their essay in more detail

Drafting rhetorical analysis essays

Support students in drafting full essays with Rhetorical Analysis Guided Drafts

When your students are ready to write full essays, NoRedInk’s Guided Drafts can provide them with scaffolding, exemplars, and tips to help them produce strong writing. Click here to learn more about Guided Drafts.

You can choose from 12 nonfiction texts with accompanying prompts in the rhetorical analysis section of our assignment library You’ll also find templates for creating your own prompts for other texts. Assign prompts directly from the assignment library.

What students see during a Guided Drafts assignment  

Use Peer Review to help students build strong rhetorical analysis essay components

During Peer Review, students write a specific component of their essays (like their thesis statements) and then give and receive anonymous feedback from classmates to improve their writing. You can use Peer Review to help students focus on one part of their essays. Students can then use their revised essay components as part of a full-length Guided Drafts assignment.

To learn more about Peer Review, click here.

The Body Paragraph: Embedding Evidence Peer Review unit can help students write stronger rhetorical analysis essays. Click here to create a Peer Review assignment! 

Revising rhetorical analysis essays

Give feedback on Guided Drafts to help students revise

Once students have submitted their essays, you can provide immediate feedback by grading students on each of the rubric items you selected and giving an overall score. You can also leave both general comments and comments on specific parts of students’ essays.

If you want students to incorporate your feedback into their work, you can send the essays back for them to revise based on your comments.

When students revise their Guided Drafts, you will be able to see the previous submissions to check that they understood your feedback and made appropriate changes.

Click here to learn more about giving feedback and requesting revisions on Guided Drafts.