Rhetoric Lab
Spot the appeal, name the device and catch the logical trick.
Rhetoric Lab gives students short passages and asks what the writer is doing. Is the speaker winning trust, stirring up feeling or leaning on facts? The first levels cover the three appeals, ethos, pathos and logos, and then the parts of an argument: the claim, the evidence and the reasoning that connects them.
Later levels turn to how sentences are built and how they sound. Students find repetition, anaphora, parallelism, rhetorical questions, analogy, understatement and hyperbole, then name a passage's tone and purpose. The last two levels teach seven logical fallacies, and some replies are perfectly fair on purpose. Every passage is a short original text written for the game.
What children practice
- Tell ethos, pathos and logos apart in a passage or a single line
- Name the claim, the evidence and the reasoning in an argument
- Choose the evidence or reasoning that best supports a claim
- Find repetition, anaphora, parallelism and rhetorical questions
- Recognize analogy, understatement and hyperbole, and name a tone or a purpose
- Spot ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, bandwagon, hasty generalization and circular reasoning
Levels
- Appeals: Ethos, pathos, logos
- Arguments: Claim, evidence, reasoning
- Word patterns: Repetition, anaphora, parallelism
- Figures of speech: Analogy, hyperbole, understatement
- Tone and purpose: How it sounds, why it is written
- Fallacies I: Four common tricks
- Fallacies II: All seven tricks
- Course mix: Everything
How it works
- Eight levels run from the three appeals to all seven fallacies, and the last level mixes everything together.
- Rounds change shape: pick a label, tap the sentence that holds a device, sort cards into groups, match terms to examples or put the parts of an argument in order.
- Five correct answers plus a short practice timer open the next level, so guessing alone will not carry a student forward.
- A wrong pick is greyed out so the student can try again, and a Need a hint? button gives up to three nudges.
Best for: A good fit for grades 9 to 12 in English classes that study persuasion, speeches or argument writing, and for any student who wants to read opinion pieces more critically.
Tip for parents: Read a short opinion piece or an advertisement together and ask which appeal it leans on most. Then ask whether the reasoning really connects the evidence to the claim.
Questions parents ask
Are the passages taken from real speeches or books?
No. Every passage, claim and reply is original text written for the game. Nothing is copied from a published work, and each passage is built to show one thing clearly.
How does the game teach logical fallacies?
Levels 6 and 7 show a short reply to a claim and ask what kind of reasoning trick it uses. Level 6 starts with four tricks and Level 7 adds three more. A reply can also be sound, so students learn to tell a flaw from a fair point.
Is this a writing game?
It trains reading and recognizing rather than writing. Students identify appeals, devices and fallacies in text that already exists, which is the skill that makes their own arguments stronger later.
Ready to try it?
Rhetoric Lab is free with a parent account. A parent adds a child profile, and the child's progress is saved.