Obama's Speech

Obama starts off the speech by complimenting the hosting school. This shows ethos, it at least builds credibility with the people at the school, because he must have good taste in what is a good school. He goes on to sympathize with the students, he acknowledges that he knows all the students have a lot on their plate. Also in this part of the speech he also says the word "twitter" with a different inflection that adds to the comedic effect and lightens the mood. He uses the phrase "old folks like me" to help remove himself from the argument and emphasis his age, that he won't be here in the future and it is the younger generation that will grow up to be the people in our society that make the decisions. 


He owns up to his own flaws which shows ethos, it makes him seem more reasonable and trustworthy, he is being honest with his audience. He also says "don’t give [your parents] a hard time when they ask you to turn off the video games and the television, and sit down to help you with your homework" and adds onto that with saying he has to do that with his daughters. So he is following his own advise. 


Obama uses logos in his reasoning on why it is important for kids to be educated and succeed. "So that’s a big part of your responsibility: Testing things out.  Taking risks.  Working hard.  Engaging with the world around you.  Those are the things that will make school more fun.  And down the road, those are the traits that will help you succeed – the traits that will lead you to invent a device that makes the iPad look like a stone tablet.  Or figure out a way to use the sun and wind to power a city.  Or write the next great American novel." You need to work hard so you can do well when you are older. 


He uses hand gestures throughout the speech to help amplify his message and keep the speech moving forward. He also didn't look down all that often so he was able to keep a good amount of eye contact with his audience. I though parts of it was delivered sort of awkwardly but on a whole it was a good speech.