English Language Review Sheet

Common Rhetorical Choices

● Allusion - Brief reference to a person, event, place, or work of art
● Analogy - A comparison between two seemingly dissimilar things. Often, uses something
simple and familiar to explain something complex
● Anaphora - Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases,
clauses, or lines
● Anecdote - A brief story used to illustrate a point or claim
● Asyndeton - Omission of conjunctions between phrases, clauses, or words
● Complex Sentence - Independent and dependent clause
● Compound Sentence - Two independent clauses
● Cumulative Sentence - Completes main idea at beginning of sentence and then builds
● Diction - Word choice
● First-Hand Evidence - Evidence based on something writer knows from personal
experience
● Hortative Sentence - Exhorts, urges, entreats, calls to action
● Juxtaposition - Placement of two things closely together to emphasize similarities or
differences
● Metaphor - Compares two things without like or as
● Periodic Sentence - Sentence whose main clause is withheld until the end
● Personification - Attribution of a lifelike quality to an inanimate object or idea
● Polysyndeton - Deliberate use of multiple conjunctions between clauses or words
● Rhetorical Question - question posed for rhetorical effect rather than getting an answer
● Simile - Compares two things using like or as

Sophistication Point Ideas

● Weave components of SPACE into analysis (audience, context, exigence)
● Address relationships between various rhetorical choices
● Considers complexities of a text - what would be different if another rhetorical choice
had been made