Rhetorical Devices Worksheet
This worksheet helps 11th-grade students identify and analyze various rhetorical devices used in literature and speeches.
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Rhetorical Devices Assessment
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Read each question carefully and provide your best answer. This worksheet assesses your understanding and application of various rhetorical devices.
Read the following excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech and answer the questions that follow.
"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition."
1. The phrase "Five score years ago" is an example of which rhetorical device?
Metaphor
Allusion
Anaphora
Juxtaposition
2. The repeated phrase "One hundred years later" at the beginning of several sentences is an example of which rhetorical device?
Alliteration
Hyperbole
Anaphora
Paradox
3. The phrase "great beacon light of hope" is an example of a , comparing hope to a guiding light without using "like" or "as."
4. The use of "manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination" creates a powerful image and is an example of .
5. Explain the effect of King's use of juxtaposition in the sentence: "One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."
Match each rhetorical device with its definition.
6. Metaphor
a. The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
7. Allusion
b. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
8. Anaphora
c. An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.
9. Hyperbole is the rhetorical device of understatement, used to make a situation seem less important than it is.
True
False
Use the words below to complete the sentences.
10. "To err is human; to forgive, divine" is an example of .
11. The phrase "passed away" instead of "died" is a common .
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