The IB Language and Literature students are preparing for a future in politics

The IB Language and Literature year 1 students created :30-:45 sec TV advertisements for either President Obama or Governor Romney that uses at least 5 fallacies. The purpose of the assignment was to identify fallacies and persuasion, not truth.

The Read Write Think site presents The 10 most frequently used fallacies are:

1.	Ad hominem (meaning "against the person")—attacks the person and not the issue
2.	Appeal to emotions—manipulates people's emotions in order to get their attention away from an important issue
3.	Bandwagon—creates the impression that everybody is doing it and so should you
4.	False dilemma—limits the possible choices to avoid consideration of another choice
5.	Appeal to the people—uses the views of the majority as a persuasive device
6.	Scare tactic—creates fear in people as evidence to support a claim
7.	False cause—wrongly assumes a cause and effect relationship
8.	Hasty generalization (or jumping to conclusions)—draws a conclusion about a population based on a small sample
9.	Red herring—presents an irrelevant topic to divert attention away from the original issue
10.	Traditional wisdom—uses the logic that the way things used to be is better than they are now, ignoring any problems of the past

Here are two examples.

The students were assessed based on the following rubric.

Rubric:

Criterion A	Knowledge and understanding of the fallacies used and their effect on the audience. .	10 marks
Criterion B	Understanding of how language (language can include:  image, color, music,and text) is used.	10 marks
Criterion C	Organization of the ad effectively creates an argument.	5 marks
Criterion D	Language is appropriate for the assignment.	5 mark